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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 




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A HISTORY 



OF 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



FOR SECONDAUT SCHOOLS 



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BY 



J.^OGIE ROBERTSON, M.A. 

FIRST ENGLISH MASTER, EDINBURGH LADIES' COLLEGE 







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NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1894 



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Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers. 
All rights reserved. 



PEEFACE 



This book has been written, in the first instance, to 
meet the requirements of my own classes in their prep- 
aration for the Leaving Certificate, the University Lo- 
cal, and other Public Examinations. I have good reason, 
however, for believing that the want of a new text-book 
of Literature is pretty generally felt, and in that belief 
the book is published for the use of secondary schools 
and private students. It embodies the practical expe- 
rience of nearly twenty years' teaching of the subject 
with which it deals. 

The book is a brief review of English Literature 
throughout its entire extent, from 449 to 1894. This 
long stretch of history is taken in six convenient periods, 
and a survey is made of each period, first in its political, 
and secondly in its literary aspect. A classification of 
the leading authors of the period is then made, and is 
followed by biographical and critical sketches, contain- 
ing the most recent results in fact and fair criticism. In 
treating of the poets I have made it a special feature of 
the book to give specimens from their work at once 
characteristic of their style and illustrative of their gen- 
ius. Notice is taken of most, if not all, of the minor 
authors of established reputation ; and each period is 
closed with pretty full chronological lists of the various 
authors belonging to it, and the more important works 
which they produced. While mostly meant for pur- 



iv PREFACE 

poses of reference, these lists will also serve to show the 
nature and extent of the literary wealth of each succes- 
sive period. 

By an arrangement of type the book is adapted for 
various courses of study. It will probably be enough 
for beginners to keep to the larger type, and it may even 
be advisable for the teacher to restrict their studies to a 
selection of the more important authors. 

In a book of this kind, involving the record of thou- 
sands of facts, it is impossible that perfect accuracy can 
at once, if at last, be attained. It is as accurate, so far 
as it goes, as I have been able by a considerable amount 
of reading and study to make it. I shall be thankful to 
receive notes of correction, and any suggestions that I 
may be favored with will be carefully considered. 

In its preparation I have necessarily been indebted to 
many writers. Where my obligations are so manifold 
and various, it would be invidious to particularize them; 
but I cannot avoid expressing my indebtedness, direct or 
indirect, to the professorial teaching and published work 
of Professor Masson, of Edinburgh. Whatever of merit 
the book contains is largely due to him ; the faults are 
my own. 

American Literature being an important branch of 
English Literature, I have attempted some notice, how- 
ever inadequate, of its producers and their work ; and in 
dealing with living authors, American or British, while 
endeavoring to omit no name of conspicuous note or 
promise, I am conscious of the tentative character of 
my selection. This part of my task, I feel, must be sup- 
plemented b}^ the intelligent teacher. 

J. L. R. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

The Anglo-Saxon Period, 449-1066 3 

From the Norman Conquest to the Death of 

Chaucer, 1066-1400 20 

From the Death of Chaucer to the Appearance 

OF Spenser, 1400-1580 42 

From the Middle of the Reign of Elizabeth to 

the Restoration, 1580-1660 81 

From the Restoration to the French Revolution, 

1660-1789 138 

From the French Revolution to the Present Time, 

1789-1894 260 

Index of Principal Authors 391 



A HISTORY 



OF 



ENGLISH LITERATURE 



Literature is the artistic expression in words of 
what is thought, felt, remembered, or imagined. It 
deals primarily and mainly with poetry, history, and 
science or philosophy— a division of its subject-matter 
which corresponds with the three great powers or atti- 
tudes of the mind— imagination, memory, and reason. 
Books, whether in prose or verse, are its outward and 
familiar aspect; and an account of the contents, style, 
and authorship of the books of a nation may be re- 
garded as a history of the literature of that nation. 

The history of English literature begins with the 
arrival of the English in England in the middle of 
the fifth century, and continues almost uninterruptedly 
through more than fourteen centuries down to the pres- 
ent time. It is a remarkably brilliant record, quite 
capable of standing comparison with the history of the 
literature, however valuable, of any country of ancient 
or modern times. It has been marked by periods of 
unusually rich and varied development, and periods of 
rest and even apparent relapse ; but, on the whole, it 
has been a stream of steady power and progression, and 



•2 A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE 

still gives promise of unabated activity and growth. 
Specially grand results were attained towards the close 
of the sixteenth century and in the earlier half of the 
seventeenth, in the age of Spenser, Shakespeare, Bacon, 
and Milton ; and again towards the end of the eigh- 
teenth century and at the commencement of the nine- 
teenth, in the age of Gibbon, Wordsworth, Scott, and 
Byron. 

English literature has been extremely sensitive to the 
influences of political and social circumstances, and has 
been besides powerfully modified by international re- 
lationships, and by such achievements of human en- 
terprise and skill as the invention of printing and the 
discovery of America. It reflects the character of the 
people as affected by permanent geographical and his- 
torical conditions — the conditions of scenery, climate, 
occupations, and mode of life, and the effects of wars, 
whether foreign, colonial, or domestic. It further re- 
flects those fleeting phases of the national character 
which have now and again been produced by the tran- 
sient influences of party, social and religious, and the 
changing mannerisms of fashionable life. 

The history of English literature may conveniently be 
divided into six periods : 

1. From 449 to 1066. 

2. From 1066 to 1400. 

3. From 1400 to 1580. 

4. From 1580 to 1660. 
6. From 1660 to 1789. 

6. From 1789 to the present time. 



449-1066 

THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD 

The Anglo-Saxons were the progenitors of the English 
nation. After their settlement in Britain they called them- 
selves English, and the country they lived in England. They 
came from their original home in that part of the lowlands 
of Germany which stretches across the isthmus of Old Den- 
mark from the Elbe mouth to the Baltic shore. They were 
a strong, daring, and masterful race of people, consisting 
of various tribes — Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, but all using 
the same Low German tongue, with dialectic differences. 
Though a home - loving people, they were habituated to 
strife both on land and sea, and even during the Roman 
occupation had made marauding descents upon Britain, 
and indeed seem to have planted a colony there to which 
Roman writers refer as the Saxon coast. After the Romans 
left, the British Celts, unable to repress a great irruption 
of the Gaels, also a Celtic people, whom the Romans had 
walled within the northern parts of the island, invited the 
co-operation of the Saxons to drive them back. The invi- 
tation was accepted, and the arrival of a powerful horde of 
Anglo-Saxons in 449 marks the commencement of English 
history. 

"Deep-blooming, strong, 
And yellow-hair'd, the blue-eyed Saxons came : 
They came, implored, but came with other aim 
Than to protect." 

They came to settle ; and invited in their turn their kinsmen 
of low Germany to aid them in securing and extending the 
settlements they at once began to make. They slew, or 
enslaved, or drove westward across the island the Britons 



4 ^ THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

who had invited them, and whom they had the effrontery to 
call Welsh — that is, foreigners ; and by the end of the sixth 
century had established themselves in the fairest parts of 
the south, centre, and east, from the Channel to the Firth 
of Forth. The lands thus appropriated they apportioned 
among themselves, and set up a confusion of rival states, 
bearing v^arious names, from which, by -and -by, emerged 
the three leading kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia, and 
Wessex. A struggle for mastery ended in the supremacy 
of Wessex. Then began the Danish inroads and settle- 
ment, and afterwards came the great Norman invasion. 

The Saxons were pagans when they came, and continued 
their pagan-worship of Woden and Thor for a century and 
a half after their coming. But they were neither without 
letters nor a literature, though they had hardly yet begun to 
commit their literature to the custody of letters. Their 
system of writing was by runes ; it was by no means in 
common use, and there is no evidence that they employed 
it on paper or parchment. Christianity, which came to them 
from both north and south, from the Celtic Culdee mission- 
aries and the Romish mission of Augustine, gave them, with 
other blessings, a knowledge of Roman characters and the 
art of literary writing. It was after they were Christian- 
ized that the traditional poems and poetic fragments which 
they brought in memory with them from the homeland in 
low Germany were first intrusted to the security of manu- 
script. And it is not only possible but probable that the 
early transcribers of that ancestral pagan literature took 
such liberties with the traditional text as Christianity and 
pride of kindred might suggest or seem to warrant. Beowulf, 
for example, our oldest English epic, composed, in all like- 
lihood, in the fifth century, before our Saxon forefathers 
quitted their Continental home, was first written down from 
traditional record in Northumbria in the eighth century, 
and bears traces of Christian editing in the introduction 
here and there of a softer element that relieves the sternness 
of its pronounced paganism. Northumbria continued to be 
the seat and centre of letters, illustrious with the nameg of 



HISTORICAL SURVEY 5 

Caedmon, Bede, and Cynewulf, till the storm of Danish bar- 
barism in the ninth century quenched its lights, and litera- 
ture fled southward to find a friend in Alfred, and a home 
in Wessex and Winchester. Danish blight again fell on 
English literature from 1013 to 1042, and it had hardly time 
to revive when the Normans came and repressed its growth 
for a century and a half. 

The range is over six hundred and sixteen years, and ex- 
tends from the arrival in Kent of a strong body of Jutes, 
under Hengist and Horsa, to the arrival in the same shire of 
a hostile force of Normans under William, afterwards known 
as The Conqueror. The following notes present in more 
detail an historical survey of the period : 

From 450 to about 600. — Conquest of the Britons and seizure of 
their territory by the Jutes, Saxons, and Angles; paganism trium- 
phant over Christianity. Arrival in Kent of the mission under St. 
Augustine (597). 

From about 600 to 835. — Edwin of Northumbria accepts Chris- 
tianity (627). Struggle for supremacy among the Anglo-Saxon 
kings; Edwin defeated by Penda of Mercia, and Northumbria 
thrown back for a while into paganism; Penda defeated (655), and 
downfall of paganism. In 664 the Synod of Whitby, by which 
the Church of England established on a Romish basis : Aidan and 
the Columbau priests leave Northumbria. Rise of Wessex to 
supreme power under Egbert; Egbert first king of the English in 
828. 

From 835 to 1066.— Danish invasions (856 to 869)— Fife, Northum- 
bria, East Angiia ravaged, and King Edmund killed. Reign of 
Alfred the Great (871-901). The Dane law defined in 878. After 
Alfred, the succession of English kings is as follows: 

Edward " The Unconquered," 901-925. 

Athelstan, 925-940. (His victory at Brunanburgh in 937.) 

Edmund, 940-946. 

Edred, 946-955. (Abbot Dunstan's power begins in this reign.) 

Edwy, 955-957. 

Edgar " The Peaceful," 958-975. (Dunstan's power equal to the 
king's.) 

Edward "The Martyr," 975-978. 

Ethelred "The Unready," 978-1016. (Great invasion of the 
Danes under Sweyn.) 

Edmund Ironside, 1016. 

Then came the Danish line : 



6 THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

Canute, Harold, and Hardicanute, from 1016 to 1042. 

The crown was restored to English brows, and Edward the 

Confessor reigned from 1043 to 1066. In 1066 Harold was 

crowned, and slain at Hastings. 



INTRODUCTION 

The Anglo-Saxon period in the history of English lit- 
erature extends to more than six centuries — from 449 to 
1066. It is longer than the interval between the age of 
Chaucer and the present time. When its duration is 
considered, it must be owned that its literary products 
will scarcely bear comparison, either in quantity or qual- 
ity, with those of any of the subsequent periods. But 
Anglo-Saxon literature has a value of its own, and must 
always be of special interest as illustrative of the ear- 
liest attempts of the English language in the art of 
literary expression. It was no unworthy commencement 
of a great literature. At the same time it should be 
remembered that only a portion of the literature of the 
Anglo-Saxons has been published, that a large proportion 
still remains in manuscript, and that much of the original 
amount was lost in the time of the Danish inroads. Tak- 
ing these circumstances into account, we must allow that 
the art of literature was by no means neglected in the 
Anglo-Saxon period, but, on the contrary, was diligently 
and largely cultivated. To this result the capabilities 
of the Anglo-Saxon tongue greatly contributed. Schol- 
ars go so far as to say that, relatively to the times, it 
was not a rude speech, but "probably the most dis- 
ciplined of all the vernaculars of Western Europe, and 
certainly the most cultivated of all the dialects of the 
Gothic barbarians." 

Anglo-Saxon literature, as we now possess it, deals 



INTRODUCTION 7 

mainly with historical and moral or religious subjects. 
At first the history is legendary, and largely blended 
with mythical creations ; it is in verse, of unknown au- 
thorship and Continental origin, and more or less frag- 
mentary. Beowulf is the longest and noblest specimen 
of this oldest English poetry, but along with it, and of a 
somewhat older date, must also be classed The Thxtmller's 
Song, The Battle of Fhmeshurg, and The Song of Deor. 
By -and -by, as the Anglo-Saxons identify themselves 
with their new settlements in England, and come under 
the civilizing influence of Christianity, the history be- 
comes authentic, and, to a large extent, a record of pass- 
ing events ; it is chiefly, but not entirely, in prose, 
written by various hands, and emanating from the mon- 
asteries, or from the court of King Alfred. The Saxon 
Chronicle is the most notable specimen of native English 
literary history of the Anglo-Saxon period ; it includes 
such excellent examples of historical verse as The Battle 
of Brimanhurgh (937) and Tlie Battle of Maldon (993). 
The narrative of the Danish wars is from King Alfred's 
pen, and is the most important piece of Old English 
prose we possess. To the same class of literature as The 
Saxon Chronicle belongs a great mass of historical trans- 
lations in prose, made during the two centuries at the 
close of the Anglo-Saxon period. Of these may be 
mentioned Alfred's version of Orosius's History of the 
World, and his translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical His- 
tory. 

Coming next to Anglo-Saxon writings on moral or re- 
ligious subjects, we have to notice, as first in time (670) 
and first in merit, Csedmon's So7ig of Creation. " Others 
after him began to make religious poems," says Bede in 
Latin, " but none could rival him, for he learned the 
craft of poetry not of man, but of God." He paraphrased 



8 THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

into verse the whole Scripture narrative. Cynevvulf was 
his poetical successor a century later, and wrote, besides 
secular poems of great power and beauty, The Ilelene 
(or Finding of the Cross), The Christy and probably The 
Andreas — a sacred epic on the adventures of St. Andrew. 
King Alfred and Archbishop Alfric made large contri- 
butions in prose to the moral and sacred literature of the 
period. The former translated Boethius's Consolation 
of Philosophy 2,w^ Pope Gregory's Pastoral Cure ; while 
the latter wrote Homilies and Lives of the Saints, and 
was a large translator of the Old Testament. Wulfstan 
(Archbishop of York from 1002 to 1023) also wrote 
Homilies ; and his spirited Address to the English is 
specially noteworthy. Bede should also be mentioned 
in this connection for a vernacular version (V35) of the 
Gospel of John, though it has unhappily perished. He 
wrote his other books, to the number of forty-four, in 
Latin prose. It is to Alfred that the honor belongs of 
having created English prose. There exists no English 
prose of earlier date than his. His design was the noble 
one of throwing open to his people in their own tongue 
the knowledge which, till then, was accessible only to 
the clergy. For that purpose he translated and edited 
many and various books, and wrote up The Saxon 
Chronicle. He was school-master as well as king to his 
people. 

The Saga of Beowulf 

It is a story of old Scandinavian life and pagan heroism. 
The scene is in Zealand and Gothland, and the Baltic Sound 
that separates them. In Zealand for many years had reigned 
King Ilrothgar. Successful in battle, and rich with the 
spoils of war, he founded Heorot, a magnificent hall, for the 
entertainment of his thanes. Here he and his braves night- 
ly feasted and slept. But the hall was built on the edge of 



THE SAGA OF BEOWULF . 9 

a moor that was haunted by a huge grim monster, Grendel 
by name. Alone with his malignant monster-mother he 
dwelt, joy-hating and divided from joy. The lights and 
festive sounds of Heorot, streaming out by night over the 
waste moorland, annoy him, and he approaches the hall to 
reconnoitre. Watching his opportunity, he enters stealthily 
when the revellers are asleep and the lights are low, and, 
seizing thirty men, hurries off with his victims into the dark- 
ness. At dawn there is woe in the hall of Heorot. 

For twelve long years the monster continues his nightly 
ravages, till Heorot stands almost empty, and Hrothgar is 
pitied far and wide. Wandering scalds carry the tidings 
everywhere. 

At the court of Hygelac, in Gothland, young Beowulf, 
the king's kinsman, first heard of Grendel. Now Beowulf 
w^as the most daring Viking of his age, and the force of 
thirty heroes was in his hand-grip. No enterprise was too 
arduous for him ; he would go to Heorot, and offer his ser- 
vices to Hrothgar, and do battle with the Grendel. Choos- 
ing fifteen comrades, he launches his long galley on the 
Sound, and rowing all that day and all night, descries at 
early dawn of the second day the glistening cliffs of Zealand. 
The warder of the coast hails the young sea-rovers as they 
land, and demands their errand. He conducts them, not 
without suspicion of their warlike array, to Heorot. At the 
door of the hall they lay down their shields and mail-shirts 
and javelins, and wearing only their towering helmets — 
crested with the image of a boar in gold — are led by Wolf- 
gar, the steward of Heorot, into the presence of Hrothgar, 
and tell their story. Hrothgar is old and bald, but at the 
sight of heroic youth reckless of danger he grows young 
again. He remembers, with a warrior's respect, the father 
of Beowulf, and willingly accepts the services of that fa- 
ther's son. The night is devoted to feasting ; and Beowulf, 
flushed with mead, boasts of his past achievements. A 
young Dane twits him with his failure in a five days' swim- 
ming-match in the open sea. Beowulf taunts the young 
Dane with his fear of the Grendel. Hrothgar laughs with 



10 THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

glee at the rivalry of the young warriors. But it is late, and 
the hour of Grendel's visit approaches. The company re- 
tire to rest, and are soon asleep — all but Beowulf. He sits 
withdrawn among the shadows, recalling his pledges and 
meditating the method of his attack. 

Over the moor through the mist comes Grendel striding. 
He bursts open the hall door with his hands, and with flash- 
ing eyes surveys the sleepers. He laughs in horrid delight. 
In a moment he has seized the nearest, bit through his body, 
drunk his blood, and devoured him. He is already gloating 
over a second victim when Beowulf grips his right arm. 
The suddenness, but especially the strength of the grip, star- 
tles the monster. He turns on his assailant, but his assail- 
ant holds the grip. A fearful struggle ensues. Benches are 
overturned ; the hall is shaken ; the sleepers in the sides of 
the hall sit up, terrified on-lookers. This way and that way 
Beowulf and the Grendel plunge and sway, locked in deadly 
embrace. The monster would gladly flee, but Beowulf holds 
the grip. The monster shrieks, tugs amain, and with one 
mighty collected effort is free. But at what cost! His 
hand, arm, and shoulder — his severed and bleeding limb — 
is left in the grip of Beowulf ! 

At earliest dawn Beowulf and his comrades trace the fatal 
bloodmarks over the moor to the edge of a mere, the waters 
of which are surging red ! It is with the blood of the 
Grendel ! They return with the joyful news to Heorot, and 
the day is given up to rejoicing and the night to revelry. 
The Grendel's arm attracts crowds, who come to see it from 
far and near. The queen and her timid maidens look on it 
and shudder. Beowulf is feted, and rewarded with horses 
and harness, and celebrated in a saga, which is chanted in 
his ears that night. They all retire to rest with no fear of 
Grendel. 

At dead of night the monster-mother of Grendel invades 
the hall, and, snatching up the arm of her son and one noble 
thane, victim to her vengeance, rouses the sleepers, and 
rushes ofE into the darkness. Beowulf vows her death ; and 
next day, scouring the moor on horseback, they for the first 



THE SAGA OF BEOWULF 11 

time take notice of its desolate features. What monsters 
more may it not contain ? 

It is a waste of windy crags and gorges where the wolf 
lurks ; of misty marshes and stagnant pools, swarming with 
serpents and dragons ; of brawling streams, tumbling from 
the clouds over cliffs and flooding the hollows ; there are 
shaggy woods, and strange fires dance on the loch waters. 
Though the moor-wanderer, the tall stag, hotly pursued from 
afar by the hounds, were to make for these shaggy woods, 
yet would he pause on nearer view of their forbidding as- 
pect, and rather yield his life than enter their recesses in 
the hope of shelter. Rather would he die of thirst on the 
bank of that ghastly lake than stoop his head to drink of 
its waters. 

Beowulf and his comrades come again to the central mere. 
It is still red with gore ; and, to their horror, there is the 
head of their comrade, the victim of the preceding night, 
floating ashore ! And now they see demons lying in the 
clefts of the surrounding rocks. One of them Beowulf 
shoots with an arrow ; then, sounding a war-blast on his 
horn, at the sound of which the demons hurry from sight, 
the mailed hero grasps his good sword Hrunting, dives in 
the deep water, and disappears ! 

For a whole day he continued sinking. The mere-mon- 
ster, wolf and woman both, Grendel's mother, clutched him 
ere his feet touched bottom, and bore him to her vast den. 
A dreadful struggle took place here. Beowulf's sword was 
powerless against^the monster ; only with his hand-grip could 
he hold her. He caught up a huge bill, an old sword of 
the giants', and smote her with it. It was her death-stroke ! 
Looking round him he saw the lifeless body of the Grendel. 
With the giants' sword he severed the head; hot blood 
welled up, melting with its heat the sword-blade, and leaving 
only the hilt in Beowulf's hand ! With the hilt and the two 
heads, regardless of the wealth in the monster's den, he rose 
through the mere and reached the surface. His companions, 
seeing the mere reddened with more blood, had given him 
up for lost. Great was their joy when they helped him 



12 THE FIRST PERIOD, 44^^-1066 

ashore. Four of them carried, and scarcely carried, the 
head of the monster on a stake to Heorot. " Now," said 
Beowulf, to Hrothgar, " now may'st thou and thy warriors 
sleep in Heorot free of care." There was feasting again 
that night. And next morning Beowulf and his brave band, 
laden with presents, raised sail and passed over sea to their 
Gothland home. 

Beowulf became king of Gothland, and reigned — a brave 
and blameless ruler — fifty years. His last exploit was to 
choke with his terrible grip and slay a fire-dragon, fifty feet 
long, who wasted his land and guarded a treasure in a cav- 
ern. But in the encounter the breath of the monster burned 
and poisoned him too severely for recovery. On Hrones- 
ness, a high sea-cape commanding a far view, his sorrowing 
people built a pile of pine-logs, hung it round with shields 
and arms, and laid the body of their lord atop ; they then 
set the wood on fire. And thus, as he had ordered, the 
earthly image of Beowulf passed from the eyes of men. 

Such is a rapid outline of the Saga of Beoivulf, the first 
long poem in the English language. If it be claimed for The 
Saxon Chronicle that it is the earliest and most venerable 
monument of Teutonic prose, not less justly may the claim 
be made for Beowulf that it is the earliest and most valuable 
monument of Teutonic verse. Its poetical beauties are not 
its only merit : it is of great historical value, showing famil- 
iarly and minutely the whole manners and customs and 
mode of life of our pagan ancestors. The events of one en- 
tire day are successively recorded. The style of the verse is 
terse and straightforward, well adapted for the rapid narra- 
tion of action, but not without that kind of repetition known 
as parallelism ; there are few similes — only five in all — and 
not many metaphors, but compound words are common — 
e.g.^ "swan-road" for "water," "heath-stalker" for "stag," 
"bone-case" for "ribs," etc. The verse itself is peculiar, 
and, though long disused in our literature, was popular for 
many centuries. It was still the popular form of poetry in 
the middle of the fourteenth century, when Langland wrote 
his Vision. The last effective use of it was made bv the 



CiEDMON 



13 



Scottish poet, William Dunbar, at the very close of the 
fifteenth century. Saxon alliterative verse, as it is called, 
takes account of neither metre nor rhyme. It is built on a 
principle of accent and alliteration. Each verse falls into 
two parts as if corresponding to the forward and backward 
movement of a rower ; there are usually two accented sylla- 
bles in each part, placed naturally on the important words, 
and the first three usually begin with the same letter, or at 
least express the same sound. Here is a specimen which ex- 
emplifies the general rule : 

"Hie digel lond 
■warigeath, wulfhleotbu, windige ngessas, 
frecne fenngelad, th£er firgenstream 
under iiaessa genipu nither gewiteth, 
flod under foldan." 

(They keep their country secret, their wolf-slopes, wiudy peaks, 
dangerous marsh-paths, where the mountain torrent from under 
the hill-mists descends, flooding the lowlands.) 

Ccedmon 

The classical English story which tells how Caedmon came 
to write verses was taken by King Alfred from the Latin of 
Bede's Ecclesiastical History. Bede was a young child- 
scholar at Jarrow-on-Tyne when Csedmon died at Whitby in 
680. The story goes very much in this way : He was a 
layman till of advanced age, and had never learned to sing; 
and on that account, when at festive times the harp was 
passed from hand to hand till each had sung for the enter- 
tainment of the rest, Csedmon would rise, when it was coming 
near his turn, and steal away home quite ashamed of himself. 
On one of those occasions, happening to have charge of the 
cattle that same night, he withdrew to the cattle-stalls, and 
having seen that everything was safe, threw himself down 
on some straw and fell asleep. He had been sleeping some 
time when he was aware of a man in a vision standing near 
him, who, after salutation, spoke to him, calling him by his 
name. *f Csedmon," he said, " sing me something." " Me !" 



14 THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

said Caedmon at once, but very humbly; "there's nothing 
that I can sing : that was why I left the company and came 
here — just because I could not sing." Presently the vision 
spoke again : " But will you not try if I ask you ?" Caed- 
mon pondered a moment, and then asked in a low tone, 
"What shall I sing?" "Sing the glory of creation," 
promptly returned the voice. On receiving the answer he 
at once began to sing, in praise of the Creator, words and 
verses he had never before heard, exactly as they are set 
down here : 

Nu we sceolon h^rian Now shall we praise 

heofonrices Weard The guardian of the heavenly 

kingdom, 

Metodes milite The power of the Creator 

Qnd his modgethqnc, And his wise design, 

wera Wuldorfa^der ; The glorious Father of men ; 

swa he wundra gehwaes, How lie of all wonders, 

ece Dryhten, The everlasting lord, 

ord onstealde. Made a beginning. 

He serest gesceop He first created 

eortban bearnum Earth for the children of men, 

heofon to lirofe Heaven for a roof — 

halig scippend ; The holy Creator ; 

tha middangeard. And the earth after— 

moncynnes Weard, He the protector of mankind, 

ece Dryhten, The eternal Father, 

aefter teode Created next 

firum fold an. The earth for men, 

Frea ^Imihtig. Ruler Almighty. 

When he arose in the morning he could recall the dream 
and repeat the song, and even continue it. He went at once 
to his superior, the farm bailiff, and told him that during the 
night he had mysteriously received the gift of song. The 
bailiff took him to the Abbess Hild, who, on hearing what 
had happened to the cattleman, summoned the most learned 
of the monks to consider the matter. They agreed that the 
heavenly gift had been given him by God himself. Then 
they translated for him a part of the Holy Writ, and bade 
him put it into verse if he could. He retired to his house, 



ALFRED AND THE SAXON CHRONICLE 15 

and next morning returned with a set of excellent verses. 
Then the abbess owned and rejoiced at God's gift in the 
man, and at her advice Csedmon abandoned the world and 
became a monk. And now in the quiet scriptorium of 
Whitby Abbey, with light from the sea-sky falling on the 
parchment as he wrote, the monk continued and completed 
what the cattleman had begun. He sang first of the shap- 
ing of the world and the making of man, and the whole 
story of Genesis ; of the outgoing of Israel from Egypt land 
to their ingoing into the land of Promise; then he sang of 
the human nativity of God, His earthly pangs and passion, 
and His glorious uprising. Much, too, he sang of the final 
doom, the fear of hell, and the sweet hopes of heaven. 

Caedmon, from his name, was of Celtic birth. His Song of 
Creation belongs to the year 670. It is in Anglo-Saxon alliter- 
ative verse — no other kind was then or for long after known 
in England; and in some passages — notably in the fall of 
the rebel angels and the angry cry of Satan from hell — it 
anticipates something of the design, and even something of 
the sublime passion, of Milton's great epic. Csedmon's poems 
remained in MS. till the year 1655, when they were printed 
for the first time, and may therefore have come under the 
notice of Milton. 

King Alfred and The Saxon Chronicle 

Alfred (849-901) is well called The Great, since no king 
on the roll of English history lived and labored so truly for 
the good of his people in every way. He was born at Wan- 
tage in Berkshire, the fifth son of Ethelwulf, King of the 
West Saxons. At the tender age of four he was taken to 
Rome, where he stayed three years, and was adopted by the 
Pope (Leo IV.) as his "bishop son." An anecdote of his 
twelfth year is worth recording : Osburh, his mother, showed 
her sons a volume of verse with a beautifully painted initial 
letter, and promised the book to whichever of them should 
first learn to read it. It was Alfred that won the prize. In 
871 Wessex was invaded for the first time by the Danes. 



1(3 THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

Alfred was present at the battle of Ashdown, where he dis- 
tinguished himself by his bravery, and he was in consequence 
elected king. It was no mere honor : he fought nine battles 
against the Danes that same year, but was forced to com- 
pound with them at last, and there was peace for a while. 
War broke out again, and Alfred became a fugitive, while 
Guthrun ravaged his country. It is to this time of his event- 
ful life that the story of the burnt cakes belongs. Presently, 
sustained by an indomitable patience and courage, he fought 
his way to success, and made terms with the Danes, by which 
Watling Street was made the limit of their settlement. His 
great work as a ruler was to make England a united nation 
against Danish aggression. Never was more industrious a 
man than Alfred. In spite of recurring illness he managed 
by a systematic economy of time to have something useful 
to occupy his attention for every waking hour of his life. 
He built up a code of wise laws, taking for its basis the Ten 
Commandments. He founded schools, and himself taught 
in them ; he founded two monasteries, which were to his 
time what universities are to ours ; he translated and edited 
with his own pen the best Latin works on religion, history, 
and science ; and he invited scholars like John the Scot, and 
voyagers like Othere, that their knowledge might be avail- 
able for his people. He gave England what no other king 
ever gave his country — a history of the nation in the na- 
tional tongue. This was The Saxon Chronicle. It. was the 
work of various pens, but Alfred was the moving spirit. He 
wrote in it a narrative of his own wars with the Danes, and 
he gathered for it from the monasteries the annals and tra- 
ditions of the past from 60 B.C., and brought it down to 891. 
It went on after his death — latterly with less fulness and 
accuracy — down to 1154, the date of Stephen's death ; and 
there it stops. 

His translations include Boethius's Consolation of Philos- 
ophy, Bede's Ecclesiastical History, and Orosius's History 
and Geography of the Wbrld — all made between 887 and 
893 ; and Pope Gregory's Pastoral Cure, made between 897 
and the year of his death. But for Alfred literature might 



BEDE 



17 



have died out in England, for it had been driven from Nor- 
thiimbria (its only seat at that time) by the Danes when Al- 
fred came to the throne, and it was he who gave it a shelter 
and popularized it in Wessex. (See his Preface to Gregory's 
Pastoral for the state of learning when he became king.) 



Bede 

Baeda (673-735) or Bede — named the Venerable — spent 
all his life in St. Paul's monastery at Jarrow-on-Tyne, which 
he entered an orphan of seven. He was the greatest scholar 
of his day in every available language and branch of knowl- 
edge, and all his desire was, like Chaucer's clerk, to learn 
and to teach. He found many to teach among the six hun- 
dred monks of his own and the neighboring monastery of 
St. Peter's at Wearmouth. He compiled, or composed, or 
translated forty-four books in Latin, notably his Ecclesiasti- 
cal History of our Island and People, and had just finished 
a version of St. John's Gospel in English when he died. 
His pupil St. Cuthbert tells the affecting story : During 
April and May of 735 he suffered from asthma, but in spite 
of his ill-health he worked on, that he might complete his 
English translation of John's Gospel. On May 26 only one 
scribe was with him, the rest being gone to the festival of 
the Ascension. " Dear master," said the boy, '' there is yet 
one chapter, and it is painful for thee to dictate." " It is 
quite easy," replied the venerable old man ; *' only write 
quickly." And thus they continued working the whole day. 
When daylight was fading — "There is only one sentence 
now to write, dear master," said the boy. " Write it quick- 
ly," said the old man, speaking with difficulty. " At last it 
is finished," said the boy. "You speak truth indeed," said 
the old man; "it is finished — all is finished now." He 
slipped on the floor ; the young scholar knelt beside him 
and tenderly supported his head. And in this posture, with 
the words " Glory to God " on his lips, Bseda the Venerable 
expired. 

2 



18 THE FIRST PERIOD, 449-1066 

A View op Anglo-Saxon Literature 

/. — Of Continental Origin 

Song of the Traveller (written early in 5tli century). 
The Complaint of Deor. 

The Fight at Finnesburg (referred to in Beowulf). 
Waldhere (fragmentary, like preceding). 

Beowulf (a long pagan epic of the first half of the 5th century, 
slightly altered and edited by an English monk of the 8th). 

IL—Of English Origin 

Csedmon's Song of Creation {circ. 670, the first English poem 
written in England : loc. Whitby). 

Exeter Book and Vercelli Book (collections of religious verse 
mainly, and so named from the places where the MSS. are 
preserved: Vercelli is in Northern Italy, about forty miles 
from Milan; its cathedral library is rich in MSS.). 

Sacred Songs by Ealdhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury (written at end 
of 7th century, loc. South, and very popular in Alfred's time 
— the English songs all lost). 

Judith — an unassigned fragment, consisting of three books de- 
scribing the Death of Holofernes : rather a war poem than a 
religious poem; loc. North of England. 

Baeda (673-735) wrote some forty-four books in Latin : his Ecclesi- 
astical History (731). An English translation of John's Gospel, 
lost. 

Secular and sacred poems by Cynewulf, a sceop or minstrel at the 
court of some Northumbrian king : temp. 8th century. His 
secular poems, written in youth, include The Wanderer, The 
Seafarer, The Wife's Complaint, The Ruin, and numerous 
Riddles; his religious poetry includes The Dream of the Rood 
(it is a fragment of this poem which is inscribed on the Ruth- 
well Cross in Dumfriesshire), containing the story of his con- 
version, a kind of prologue to his Helene, or Finding of the 
Cross; The Christ; The Passion of St. Juliana; perhaps The 
Phoenix, and The Andreas. These are preserved in the Exeter 
and Vercelli Books. 

The Saxon Chronicle, circ. 800 ; revised and extended backward to 
Hengist, at Winchester, circ. 850-60. 

King Alfred's English translations of Orosius, Baeda's Ecclesiasti- 
cal History, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, and Greg- 
ory's Pastoral Cure. In his time The Saxon Chronicle was 



A VIEW OF ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE 19 

carried back to 60 B.C., and on to 891. The narrative of the 
wars with the Danes is from Alfred's own pen: it is the most 
important piece of Anglo-Saxon prose extant. 

Song of the Battle of Brunanburgh {tem-p. ^'^1—loc. South of Eng- 
land) is one of the verse parts of The Saxon Chronicle: it de- 
scribes King Athelstan's battle with Anlaf the Dane. 

Song of the Battle of Maldon {temp. 993— ?oc. South of England; 
the language is late West Saxon); it describes fighting in 
Northumberland against the Danes, and the death of Earl 
Brihtnoth. It too is part of the Chronicle under the year 993. 

Alfric's translations of Old Testament historical books, Homilies, 
and Colloquy (the last-mentioned the first English-Latin dic- 
tionary, or rather reading-book, with amusing descriptions of 
the life of ploughmen, students, etc.), circ. 990-94. 

Wulf Stan's Homilies, circ. 1015; also his spirited Address to the 
English. 



1066-1400 

FEOM THE NORMAN" CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF 
CHAUCER 

The range is over three hundred and thirty-four years, 
and extends, in English political history, from the beginning 
of the Norman line of kings all through the dynasty on- 
ward, in the Plantagenet line, to the accession of the house 
of Lancaster. The order of kings is as follows : Normans — 
William I., William II., Henry I., and Stephen ; Plantage- 
NETS — Henry II., Richard I., John, Henry III., Edward I., 
Edward II., Edward III., and Richard II. The last-named 
sovereign, deposed in 1399, was in that year succeeded by 
Henry IV., the first of the Lancastrians. The chief events 
of English history, affecting more or less the literary pro- 
duction of the period, are here presented as they occurred 
in the successive reigns. 

Keign of William I., 1066-1087.— The Conquest completed by the 
defeat of the English, though aided by Sweyn of Denmark, in the 
north, and the defeat of Hereward the Wake in the marshes of 
Ely. Remodelling of the Church, and establishment of the feudal 
system; papal encroachments resisted, and checks placed on the 
power of the nobles. 

Reign of William II., 1087-1100.— Tyranny of the king in both 
Church and State ; the danegeld increased, the forest laws cruelly 
enforced, appropriation of the revenues of bishoprics, etc. The 
First Crusade. Invasion of England by Malcolm HI., twice un- 
successful, the second time Malcolm (in 1093) slain at Alnwick, and 
Scotland acknowledged b}^ Edgar to be an English fief. 

Reign of Henry I., 1100-1135. — The king's marriage with Matilda 
01 Scotland (1100) ; the tyranny of the last reign checked, and 
justice administered in Church and State. Invasion of Normandy 
and captivity of Robert. Struggle against Pope maintained. 
Loss at sea, in the White Ship, of Prince William (1120); alle- 



HISTORICAL SURVEY 21 

giance promised to the king's daughter, Empress Matilda (after- 
wards married to Geoffrey Plantagenet of Anjou). 

Reign of Stephen, 1135-1154. —Civil war between the suppoi't- 
ers of Stephen and Matilda's party ; David of Scotland defeated 
at Northallerton (1138). Arrival of Matilda, and her son flenry 
acknowledged to be Stephen's heir. 

Reign of Henry XL, 1154-1189.— Struggle against papal encroach- 
ments continued ; the constitutions of Clarendon enforced ; mur- 
der of Becket (1170). Conquest of Ireland (1172). Revolt of the 
king's sons, and rebellion of his French vassals— suppressed ; re- 
volt of English barons — suppressed; William the Lion of Scot- 
land pays homage (1174). Sudden downfall of the king. 

Scutage, a serious blow to feudalism, was instituted in this reign. 

Richard I., 1189-1199. — Crusade and period of his imprisonment 
(1189-1194). War with France (1194-1199.) William the Lion 
bought back his independence. 

John, 1199-1216, — His succession disputed ; Prince Arthur's mur- 
der ; loss of French provinces. Quarrel with Pope about a succes- 
sor to the see of Canterbury ; John excommunicated (1209). His 
abject submission (1213) to Rome. Revolt of his barons ; Magna 
Charta granted (1215). Civil war ; invasion by the French. 

Henry III., 1216-1272.— French invaders driven back, and Eng- 
land kept for the English. Arrival in England of Franciscan and 
Dominican friars. The Mad Parliament; the Provisions of Ox- 
ford ; Simon de Montfort's Parliament (in which the burghs 
were represented) ; defeat and death of De Montfort at Evesham 
(1265). 

Edward I., 1272-1307.— Wales conquered 1277, and finally in 
1283. Invasion and partial conquest of Scotland ; Wallace exe- 
cuted in 1305. Revolt of Scots under Bruce (1306). 

Edward 11, 1307-1327.— Struggle of king and his favorite. Piers 
de Gaveston, against the barons. Battle of Bannockburn (in 1314) ; 
Scotland free. The Queen Isabella, with Mortimer and the bar- 
ons, compel the king's abdication ; his murder in Berkeley Keep. 

Edward III., 1327-1377. — Treaty of Northampton recognizing 
Scottish independence (1328). Sudden overthrow of the govern- 
ment of queen-mother and Mortimer (1330). Defeat of Scots at 
Halidon Hill (1333). Commencement of the Hundred Years' War 
with France (1338) ; Cressy (1346) ; Poitiers (won by the Black 
Prince, 1356). The Black Death (1348) ; the oppressive Statute of 
Laborers (1349). The Good Parliament of 1376. Lollardism. 

Richard II., 1377-1399.— The Peasants' Revolt (1381). Rich- 
ard's favoritism ; strife with the barons ; his abdication ; his death 
at Pontefract Castle (1400). 

The succession of Scottish sovereigns for the same period was 



22 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

as follows : Malcolm III. (Canmore), 1057-1093 ; Donaldbain, 
1093-1094 ; Duncan II., 1094-1095 ; Donaldbain restored, 1095- 
1097; Edgar, 1097-1107; Alexander I., 1107-1124 ; David I., 1124- 
1153 ; Malcolm IV., 1153-1165 ; William I. (The Lion), 1165-1214 ; 
Alexander 11,1214-1249; Alexander III., 1249-1286 ; Margaret 
(the Maid of Norway), 1286-1290; John (Baliol), 1292-1296. An 
interregnum for ten years. Robert I. (Bruce), 1306-1329 ; David 
11,1329-1371; Robert II., 1371-1390; Robert III., 1390-1406. The 
only noteworthy Scottish literature of this period — Barbour's 
Brus, Wyntoun's Cronykil, and old ballads — deals with the strife 
and struggle which almost continuously agitated the country. 
The strife was with England, and, though sometimes aggressive, 
as shown in the preceding abstract of English history, was in the 
main a struggle for independence. 



INTRODUCTION 

The long struggle between the Anglo-Saxon or Eng- 
lish and Anglo-Norman or French languages, which be- 
gan shortly after the Conquest in 1066, ended at last 
in favor of the native tongue. French was absorbed. 
But till the absorption little was produced in English 
that possessed any literary merit at all. There was only 
the continuation of The &axon Chroriicle till 1154, fol- 
lowed half a century later by Layamon's Brut. There 
was, however, a large body of Latin and French, litera- 
ture, written by monkish chroniclers and romancing 
trouveurs. Chief among the Latin writers were William 
of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Henry of Hunt- 
ingdon, and Giraldus Cambrensis, all monkish chroni- 
clers ; Nicholas Breakspear, the only Englishman that 
has worn the papal tiara, Thomas a Becket, Robert 
Grostete, and Matthew Paris, all writers on theological 
or ecclesiastical subjects ; and Michael Scott, Roger 
Bacon, and John Duns Scotus, philosophical or scholas- 
tic writers. The French writers include King Henry 
I., surnamed Beauclerc ; Wace, who translated from 



INTRODUCTION 23 

the Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and was himself 
translated into English by Layamon ; and Walter Map 
or Mapes, the friend and councillor of Henry II., who 
wrote, besides, Latin legends of King Arthur, and blent 
them with the doctrines of Christianity by inventing 
and adding the story of The Holy Grail. Numerous 
French fabliaux and cycles of romances from abroad 
were also circulating in the country, many of which 
were rendered into English in the reigns of the first 
three Edwards. Popular subjects of those romances 
were the legends of Arthur, Charlemagne, and Alexan- 
der the Great, and the histories and traditions of Rich- 
ard of the Lion Heart, Robert of Sicily, Sir Guy of 
Warwick, and Sir Bevis of Southampton. 

Three centuries after the Norman Conquest, English, 
considerably modified in the interval, was once more the 
speech of a united nation. The Normans found they 
had to adopt the language of the majority. In 1350 
English was used in the schools ; and in 1362 it was 
enacted by Edward III. that both French and Latin 
must give place to English in the courts of law. From 
the date of that enactment English literature, as we un- 
derstand the word, had a chance, and was both able and 
swift to take it. Chaucer was then in his twenty-sec- 
ond year ; Langland, Barbour, Gower, and Wyclif were 
middle-aged men, with their literary work still before 
them. 

In this period end -rhymes, introduced from France, 
began to supersede Anglo - Saxon alliterative verse, and 
took a permanent place in the history of English poetry. 
The effect of the Norman Conquest upon English was 
to simplify the grammar and increase the vocabulary, 
and enrich the literature of the nation with many a 
song and story. 



24 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 



A General View op the Literature op the Period, 

1. The Saxon Chronicle is continued, and ends abruptly in 1154 
with the death of Stephen. With it died Anglo-Saxon poetry 
and Anglo-Saxon prose. 

2. Religious Poetry, begun in Anglo-Saxon times by Caedmon, 
continues : 

(a) Orm's Ormulum, circ. 1215, a metrical version in pure Eng- 
lish of the daily service of the church, with a homily in verse 
added. 

(b) The Ancren Riwle (Rule of the Anchoresses), circ. 1220, con- 
tinues the Ormulum. 

(c) Lives of the Saints, circ. 1300, translated from Latin or French 
into English verse. 

(d) Handlyng Synne (or Manual of Sins), 1303, from the French, 
by Robert Manning of Brunne. 

(e) Cursor Mundi, cii'c. 1320, a metrical version of the Script- 
ures, with legends of the Saints. 

(The Ayenbite of Inwyt, Remorse of Conscience, 1340, a 

translation in prose from the French.) 
(/) The Pricke of Conscience, circ. 1340, in Latin, but also in 

Northern English, by Richard Rolle of Hampole. 
(g) Piers Plowman, 1362, by William Langley or Langland. 

3. Historical and Narrative Poetry. 

(The prose histories were written in Latin ; were mere annals at 
first, written by the chroniclers in isolated monasteries, till a more 
competent class of men arose who lived at the court. Of these 
later historians the first is William of Malmesbury, whose book 
comes down to 1142 ; and among the last is Matthew of Paris, who 
lived in the latter part of the thirteenth century.) 

Geoffrey of Monmouth's twelve short books of Romance, "play- 
fully called history," put forth as a Latin translation from the 
original Welsh in 1147. Extremely popular (except among 
the real historians), it got into French, was added to and em- 
bellished in France, and came back as the work of Wace, 
with the title of The Brut, in 1155. From Wace's French, 
Layamon, an English priest in Worcestershire, translated it 
into English verse, and Layamon's Brut (1205) is our first 
great English poem after the Conquest. 
Romances popularized from the French : 
(a) King Arthur and the Round Table, introduced in Latin 
by Geoffrey of Monmouth ; continued also in Latin by 
Walter Map, who added the Quest of the Grail and the 
Morte d'Arthur. These Arthurian stories were all versified 



WILLIAM LANGLAND 



25 



into English, and extremely popular before the end of the 
thirteenth century. 

{b) Charlemagne and the douzy peers ; 

(c) Life of Alexander ; 

{d) Siege of Troy — all well known by the time of Chaucer. 
Lyrics : Ballads of Robin Hood ; Owl and Nightingale ; and 
Laurence Minot's Songs (1352) of the great battles of Ed- 
ward III. 

4. Sir John Mandeville : Travels. Englished after 1356. 

5. John Wyclif s Translation of the Bible, in 1383. Fixed a 
standard English, 

6. John Gower : Fifty Balades, in the French style, on love ; 
Speculum Meditantis (in French), Vox Clamantis (in Latin), 
Confessio Amantis, 1393 (in English). 

7. Chaucer, 1340-1400. 

PEINCirAL AUTHORS 

I. P(9efe.— William Langland, John Barbour, John Gower, 
Geoffrey Chaucer. 
Others. — Layamon, Orm, Thomas the Rhymer, etc. 
II. Prose Writers. — Sir John Mandeville, John Wyclif. 



POETS 

The four chief poets of this period all died about the 
same time. The active part of their lives belongs to the 
latter half of the fourteenth century. William Langland 
(1320 ?-1400?) was not the least popular and influential of 
the four. He was born at Cleobury Mortimer, near the 
Malvern Hills, in Shropshire, where he received his educa- 
tion, and took minor orders as a clerk or secular priest. 
He was in London, and resident at Cornhill, while still a 
young man, and maintained himself and his wife and 
daughter by chanting dirges and placebos at the funerals of 
the rich. We know more of his personality than of the 
outward facts of his life. He makes occasional reference 
to himself in his poem, from which we learn that he was a 
tall, stiff, taciturn man, utterly discontented with the exist- 
ing state of society, and despondent of improvement or re- 
form. Long Will the people called him, and they thought 



26 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1065-1400 

he was next thing to being mad. He stalked along Cheap- 
side in silent indignation at the pride of wealth, or in silent 
sorrow at the miseries of the destitute. The contrast be- 
tween riches and poverty oppressed him, and he was ill in- 
clined to salute the grand lords and dames who rode past 
him decked with silver and miniver. He resembles most 
one of the stern Hebrew prophets, whose mission it was to 
warn and denounce. A poor man himself, he is the poet of 
the poor. His subject is Piers Plowman, the representa- 
tive name of the simple, honest, hard-working English peas- 
ant of the time. The Vision of Piers Plowman is the title 
of his long poem, or rather series of poems. It runs to 
seven thousand five hundred long lines of alliterative verse of 
the ancient Anglo-Saxon structure — a measure which was still 
more familiar to the public ear in the fourteenth century 
than the measure of the French rhymed romances. The 
poem takes the popular form of just such an allegorical 
dream as afterwards visited the imaginary slumbers of Bun- 
yan in Bedford jail. Langland describes himself as weary 
with wandering, and falling asleep by the side of a brook 
to the lullaby of the water. The material circumstances in 
which he falls asleep are in strange contrast to the world of 
his tumultuous dream. It is a May morning, and sunshine 
is falling soft on the green slopes and glancing streams of 
Malvern. Pastoral peace surrounds the unconscious sleeper. 
He dreams that he is in an unknown wilderness. Far to the 
east is the wonderful Tower of Truth, illumined with its own 
light; on the other side is a deep dark valley with a dun- 
geon — the abode of death and demons ; and the busy world 
of men, like a great Vanity Fair, stands between. The field 
of his vision is full of folk, " of all manner of men, the mean 
and the rich, working and wandering as the world asketh." 
Here are honest peasants swinking among the furrows, be- 
hind the plough, or bearing the seed-sheet. To them comes 
no holiday, and the fruit of all their toil is wasted by glut- 
tonous idlers. There are the motley crowds of idlers : rich 
people in their fine apparel ; chaffering merchants and wan- 
dering minstrels — " Judas's children " ; pilgrims and palmers, 



WILLIAM LANGLAND 27 

loath to work, and licensed to wander and tell lies all their 
lifetime ; sturdy beggars with well-fed bodies and well-filled 
bags ; lawyers, and ale - drapers, and sellers of indulgences. 
From this general description the dream wanders away into 
episodes, which become confusing from want of develop- 
ment or want of coherence. One fine episode presents Rea- 
son preaching to the crowd, and describes the conversion of 
the Seven Deadly Sins ; another shows Piers Plowman guid- 
ino- the multitude in the direction of Truth. Here and there 
are descriptions of the dreadful ravages caused by the famines 
and pestilences of those far-off insanitary times, and in- 
cidental pictures of rustic life in croft and village both in 
times of plenty and times of want. The scenes are not with- 
out touches of Hogarthian humor, and there is a feeling for 
nature and beauty ; but the poem as a whole is bitterly 
satirical or gloomily religious. It is an allegorical satire 
exposing the corruption of the State, the Church, and socie- 
ty. Viewed in another aspect, it is a Pilgrim's Progress in 
search of Truth. It was apparently Langland's life - work, 
and was altered and added to oftener than once. The ear- 
liest text is of date 1362, a second appeared about IS'ZV, and 
the third about 1390. 

"Now 'ginnetli the Glutton for to go to shrift, 
And carrietli him churchward his shrift for to tell. 
Then Betty the brewster bade him ' Good-morrow I' 
And then she asked of him ' whither that he would ?' 
'To holy church,' quo'd he, 'for to hear mass. 
And then I shall be shriven and sin no more.' 
'I have good ale, gossip,' quo'd she; 'Glutton, wilt thou try it?' 
'Hast thou ought in thy pouch?' quo'd he ; ' an^ hot spices?' 
'Yea, Glutton, gossip,' quo'd she ; 'God wot, full good ; 
I have pepper, and peony seed, and a pound of garlick, 
And a farthingworth of fennel seed for these fasting days.' 

Then goeth Glutton in ; and great oaths after ! 
Cicely the soutar's wife sat on the bench, 
Watty the warrener, and his wife both, 
Tomkiu the tinker, and twain of his knaves, 
Hiccon the hackney-man, and Hugo the needier, 
Clarissa of Cock's Lane, and the clerk of the church, 
Davy the Dyker, and a dozen others. 



28 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

They greeted Sir Glutton with a gallon of ale ; 
There was laughing, and chaffing, and ' Let it go round !' 
Bargains and beverages began to arise ; 
They sat so till evensong, and sang for some while, 
Till Glutton had gulped down the gallon and a gill. 

And after all this surfeit an illness he had. 
And slept Saturday and Sunday till the sun went to rest. 
Then he waked of his wink, and, wiping his eyes, 
The first word that he spake was ' where is the cup ?' 
His wife warned him then of his wickedness and sin ; 
Then was he ashamed, and swore, and scratched ears. 
And began to groan grimly, and great ado made 
For the wicked life he had been living. 
'For hunger or for thirst I make mine avow 
Never shall fish on Fridays my stomach defy 
Ere mine aunt Abstinence shall have given leave ; 
And yet I have hated her all my lifetime !' " 

— Passus V. (modernized). 

John Barbour (1320?-1395) had something of the skill 
in narrative, the combined simplicity and terseness, of his 
great contemporary Chaucer ; and, like Chaucer, he is some- 
times spoken of as the father of his country's verse. Famous 
as the author of The Bruce, little more is known of him ex- 
cept that he filled the oflSce of Archdeacon of Aberdeen 
from 1357 onward to the time of his death, that he had 
occasional free passes to the University of Oxford from the 
King of England, and that he was in receipt of several small 
pensions from David II. and Robert II., the son and grand- 
son respectively of the hero whom his poem commemorates. 
The whole poem is charged with patriotic sentiment, and 
the sentiment is often expressed with a fervor of utterance 
that stamps it at once as genuine. The noble and well- 
known apostrophe to Freedom is such an utterance. The 
poem has other than poetical merits : it is of great historical 
value. Barbour may have been born so recently as six 
years after the great Scottish victory at Bannockburn ; it was 
extremely probable that he had conversed with eye-witnesses 
of that memorable battle, and even with men who had taken 
part in it and in the long struggle for national liberty which 
led up to it. His descriptions have therefore the vigor and 



JOHN BARBOUR 



29 



boldness, and minuteness of detail, which come from fulness 
and freshness of knowledge. The poem is a rhymed epic 
on the significant events and important pergons in Scottish 
history between 1306 and 1322, and was completed about the 
year 1376. The measure is the octosyllabic couplet such 
as Chaucer employs in his House of Fame. Scott made 
great use of The Bruce in writing the Lord of the Isles. 



^ loyal 

2 disdained 



loved 



visage 



'wlio 



'He wes in all his deidis lele ;' 
For him dedeynyeit ^ nocht to dele 
With trechery, na with falset. 
His hart on hey honour wes set: 
And hym contenyt on sic maner, 
That all him luffyt ^ that wer him ner 
Bot he wes nocht so fayr, that we 
Suld spek gretly off his beaute: 
In wysage^ wes he sumdeill gray, 
And had black hair as Ic hard say; 
Bot off lymmys he wes weill made, 
With banis gret, and schuldrys braid . 
Qulien he wes blyth he wes lufly, 
And meyk and sweyt in cumpany : 
Bot quha ^ in battaill mycht him se 
All othir contenance had he. 
And in spek wlispyt he sumdeill ; 
Bot that sat him rycht wondre weill." 

— The Brus (Portrait of the Douglas). 
'A! fredome is a noble thing ! 
Fredome mayss ® man to haiif liking ; 
Fredome all solace to man giffis : 
He levys'' at ess^ that frely levys! 
A noble hart may have nane ess 
Na ellys nocht that may him pless 
Gyff^ fredome fayle ; for fre liking 
Is yharnyt^" our all othir thing. 
Na he, that ay hass levyt fre. 
May nocht kuaw weill the propyrte, 
The angyr, na the wrechyt dome, 
That is cowplyt to foule thyrldome. 
Bot gyff he had assayit it. 
Than all perquer^^ he suld it wyt, 
And suld think fredome mar to pryss, 
Than all the gold In warld that is." 

—The Brus (Freedom) 



makes 



lives 



ease 



'If 
^'^ yearned for 



^^ perfectly 



30 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

The moral Gower, as Chaucer called him, was a few years 
older than his great contemporary and friend, and claimed 
him as his disciple. Not much is known of the actual life 
of John Gower (1323 ?-1408). He was very learned, pos- 
sessed lands in various counties, had a snug seat in Kent, 
and wrote three unconscionably long and prosaic poems in 
three different languages. These are Speculum Meditantis, 
in French ; Vox Clainantis, in Latin ; and Confessio Amantis, 
in English. The first is lost. The last he sat down to write 
when he was turned of sixty ; it runs to thirty thousand 
rhymed octosyllabic lines, and it is constructed in much the 
same way as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is a collection 
of tales, none of them original, told to a Lover by his Con- 
fessor for the purpose of showing how indulgence in any of 
the Seven Deadly Sins hinders the growth of true love. 
The stories are taken from the Romances and the Gesta Ro- 
manorum. The dialogue between Lover and Confessor is 
the setting, or framework, of the incorporated stories. 
Sloth, for example, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins, and ad- 
mits of six varieties — Delay, Pusillanimity, Forgetfulness, 
Negligence, Idleness, Somnolence ; the stories are according- 
ly arranged in sections to illustrate these vices. At the end 
of each story Confessor asks Lover whether he is guilty of 
the form of vice it illustrates. The reply of Lover varies. 
The last tale of the whole long collection is the longest, and, 
curiously enough, the best. It is memorable as having fur- 
nished the plot of Pericles^ Prince of Tyre — a play some- 
times attributed to Shakespeare. 

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), the father of English poe- 
try, and the first English poet to achieve European celeb- 
rity, was the son and grandson of wine-merchants carrying 
on business in London. Born in London, he was a true son 
of the city, and was more or less constantly connected with 
it during the whole course of his life. The London of 
Chaucer's time, however, it should be remembered, was very 
different from the huge noisy Babylon which it is now. 
The Thames was then a clear-flowing stream, and the coun- 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 31 

try was only a few minutes' walk from the heart of the 
town ; while in the town itself there were green fields and 
gardens separating and adorning the narrow, picturesque 
streets. Thus with the social advantages of the town, 
Chaucer at the same time enjoyed from boyhood the calm 
delights and soothing influences of country life. Two other 
advantages were his, serviceable, if not essential, to the 
growth of a great poet — the benefits of courtly training and 
foreign travel. However it came about, we find young 
Chaucer, at the age of sixteen, filling the honorable position 
of page in the household of a prince of about his own age, 
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the second son of Edward III. 
Two years later he accompanied the prince to the French 
wars, and, taking part in an engagement, had the misfortune 
to be captured by the enemy, and kept a prisoner till ran- 
somed and released, in 1360, at the treaty of Bretigny. We 
next hear of him when he is about twenty-six, as one of the 
king's esquires, and in receipt of a small pension granted 
him for life. A little before this, however, he seems to 
have married a certain Philippa, described as one of the 
queen's ladies, to whom also a small pension was granted. 
Chaucer had already begun to write, and had found a stead- 
fast patron in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster — not yet 
" old " and " time-honored," but exactly of the same age as 
his protege. The young Duchess of Lancaster dying in 
1369, Chaucer lamented his patron's and his own loss — for 
the Duchess Blanche had encouraged his verses — by a 
poem, which was afterwards gratefully remembered, to the 
writer's advantage, by her son, Henry IV. From about his 
thirtieth to his forty-second year Chaucer approves himself 
to have been a man of business capacity and courtly tact by 
the circumstance that he went for the king on no fewer 
than seven diplomatic missions, of which three were to Italy. 
The first of those Italian embassies was in 1372, and it is 
believed that on that occasion Chaucer met Petrarch (then 
nearly seventy) at Padua, and heard from his lips the story 
of patient Griselda. He may also have met Boccaccio ; but 
Dante was dead. There can, however, be no doubt that the 



32 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

genius of Chaucer received a new and vigorous inspiration 
from the Italian poetry of the Renaissance, with which his 
long sojourn of over a year in northern Italy made him well 
acquainted. This Italian mission was otherwise memorable : 
the king was so pleased with the success attending it that 
he made Chaucer Comptroller of the Customs of Wools, etc., 
in the port of London, and gave him a grant of a pitcher of 
wine daily. At the same time he received a life pension 
from his patron. The comptrollership required Chaucer's 
personal attention ; his own pen, and not that of a deputy, 
had to make out the bills of lading. But his evenings were 
his own. He was now busy with his great work, The Can- 
terbury Tales. In 1382 he was appointed to another comp- 
trollership, that of the Petty Customs, and now he was per- 
mitted the services of a deputy. Six years later, in his 
forty-sixth year, he was member of Parliament for Kent, 
and at the height of his prosperit3\ But in the winter of 
that same year he sustained a great reverse of fortune, 
which continued for nearly three years. He lost his comp- 
trollership, and was forced to borrow on the security of his 
annuities. It was all owing to the absence of his patron in 
Spain, for on his return Chaucer's fortunes revived. He was 
appointed to the Clerkship of Works, first at Westminster, 
and afterwards at Windsor. But these were short appoint- 
ments. He was again in pecuniary difficulties ; John of 
Gaunt died ; his son seized the crown ; and one of the first 
acts of Henry IV. — hearing, doubtless, of Chaucer's Com- 
plaint to his Empty Purse — was to grant to the needy poet 
an additional pension of £40. This he enjoyed for only a 
year, dying unexpectedly in the full maturity of his powers 
and in the midst of his poetical labors, in his garden-house 
at Westminster, where he had just made preparations for a 
long residence. He was the first of our poets to be buried 
in the sacred corner of Westminster Abbey. 

In regard to his personal appearance, Chaucer was short 
of stature and of slender make, modest and even shy in 
company, with an elfish or abstracted demeanor, and a habit 
of looking down, yet of an erect bearing of body, and swift 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 33 

in walking. Mine host of tlie Tabard is pleasantly ironical 
on the subject of Chaucer's slenderness, and twits him on his 
absent looks. His love of lonely nature, of fields and trees 
and birds and flowers ; his love of books, and absorption in 
his studies, sitting for hours dumb as a stone till his looks 
were dazed, along with other interesting details of his per- 
sonal habits, may be read in his Prologue to the Legend of 
the Nine Good Women. As a poet he was a consummate 
artist in both form and melody. His skill in narrative and 
characterization has rarely been equalled, never surpassed. 
His most effective touches are made with the utmost ease 
and simplicity ; there is no appearance of striving after 
effect. The tale is told, the portrait drawn and colored, not 
to please any second or third person, but because to do so 
is delightful to the artist. His range is universal ; he tells 
every kind of story, depicts every type of character. The 
most distinctive qualities of his verse are tenderness, humor, 
and shrewd common-sense; there is, besides, a sweet hu- 
manity, which takes all bitterness from his satire, and ex- 
hibits some degree of a gracious sympathy with every sort 
and condition of men. Chaucer has no animosities, and 
cherishes no grudge. He is a perfect contrast to his con- 
temporary, the earnest but atrabilious Langland. He looked 
upon the world of men with different eyes. He was willing 
to be pleased, and sought out the bright side always. Even 
the worldliness of the clergy amused and did not madden 
him. His chivalry to women, his gentleness to children, his 
sympathy with youth, and his kindly feeling for all are 
everywhere apparent in his poems. He knew and lived in 
the society of persons of rank, yet long before Tennyson he 
placed the kind heart above the coronet, and faithfulness 
over the claims of high descent. Nobility of soul had ever 
his warmest admiration, without regard to the rank of life 
in which it was revealed. His humor is usually subtile and 
playful ; even at its broadest and coarsest it is genuine, and 
has at last the artist's apology to excuse it. His pathos is 
natural, sensitive, and searching. His stories of Constance, 
little Hugh of Lincoln, and patient Griselda exhibit charac- 



34 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

teristic specimens of this quality in various relations. His 
common-sense, blent with gently bantering humor — show- 
ing his knowledge of the world — may be seen even in his 
portrait of the Monk, or in the postscript or I'envoy to the 
Clerk's Tale of Griselda. 

Chaucer's genius developed under three great influences, 
and therefore reveals three stages of growth. There is, 
first, the French stage, to which belong his ABC, the 
Co7npleynte to Pity, and the Dethe of Blaunche the Duchesse ; 
also, if they be Chaucer's, the Romaunt of the Rose and The 
Flower and the Leaf The time is during his attendance at 
court, and extends from about 1365 to 1372. There is, sec- 
ond, the Italian stage, to which belong his Troylus and 
Creseide, The Co77ipleynte of Mars and Venus, Anelida and 
Arcite, The Assembly or Parlament of Foules, The Hous of 
Fame, and about ten of the Canterbury Tales. This is the 
time of his diplomatic missions and his personal attendance 
on the Customs at the port of London, and stretches over 
ten or twelve years from 1372. Lastly, there is the English 
stage of his poetical development, in which, having assimi- 
lated what was best in French spirit and Italian form and 
freedom, he applied his whole heart to English nature, home 
themes (for the most part), and a native style. To this time 
belong his Legende of Good Women, the Prologue to the 
Canterbury Tales, and the best and most English of the 
Tales themselves. 

The plan of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer's greatest work, 
is told in the Prologue. A party of thirty representative 
pilgrims of both sexes, and of all ranks from noble to peas- 
ant, set off one morning from the Tabard in South wark, to 
go under the guidance of the landlord of that famous hostel 
to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. They 
propose to lighten the journey by stories on the way, each 
pilgrim to tell two, and to return again, telling stories as be- 
fore, to the Tabard to a great supper, at which the best story- 
teller is to be the guest of the other pilgrims. The stories 
told number only twenty-four in all, so that the plan remains 
unfulfilled. Each story befits the character of the person 



GEOFFREY CHAUCER 



35 



"^ am not 

3, 



that tells it, and the connection is made by the author's nar- 
rative or the dialogue of the pilgrims. 

"And as for me, though than I konne but lyte,' ^little 

On bokes for to rede I me delyte, 
And to hem yive I feyth and ful credence, 
And in myn lierte have hem in reverence 
So hertely, that ther is game noon, 
That fro my bokes maketh me to goon, 
But yt be seldom on the holy day, 
Save, certeynly, whan that the monethe of May 
Is comen, and that I here the foules synge, 
And that the floures gynuen for to sprynge, 
Fairewel my boke, and my devocioun ! 
Now have I thanne suche a condicioun, 
That of alle the floures in the mede, 
Thanne love I most thise floures white and rede, 
Suche as men callen daysyes in her toune. 
To hem have I so grete affeccioun, 
As I seyde erst, whanne comen is the May, 
That, in my bed ther daweth me no day, 
That I nam 2 uppe and walkyng in the mede, 
To seen this floure ayein ^ the sonne sprede. 
Whan it up rysith erly by the morvve ; 
That blissful sight softneth al my sorwe . . . 
And doune on knes anoon ryght I me sette. 
And as I koude, this fresshe flour I grette, 
Knelyng alwey, til it unclosed was. 
Upon the smale, softe, swote ^ gras. 
That was with floures swote enbrouded' al, 
Of swich swetnesse, and swich odour over-al, 
Tliat for to speke of gomme, or herbe, or tree, 
Comparisoun may noon ymaked be; 
For yt surmounteth pleynly alle odoures. 
And eek of riche beautee alle floures . . . 
Adoune ful softely I gan to synke, 
And lenynge on myn elbowe and my syde, 
The louge day I shoope me for tabide ® ^prepared to stay 

For nothing ellis, and I shal nat lye. 
But for to loke upon the daysie; 
That men by reson wel it calle may 
The daisie, or elles the ye of day. 
The emperice, and floure of floures alle. 
I pray to God that faire mote she falle, 
And alle that loven floures, for hire sake." 

— Prologue to the Legend of Oood Women. 



* sweet 

^ embroidej'ed 



36 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

" For liim was levere^ have at his beddes heede ^lieiGouMTailier 
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reede, 
Of Aristotle and his philosophie, 
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sawtrie. 
But al be that he was a philosophre, 
Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre ; 
But al that he mighte of his frendes hente,^ ^get 

On bookes and on lernyng he it spente . . . 
Of studie took he most cure and most heede. 
Not 00^ word spak he more than was neede, ^ one 

And that was seid in forme and reverence 
And schort and quyk, and ful of high sentence.^ '^meaning 
Sownynge^ in moral vertu was his speche, ^Tending to 

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche." 

—Prologue to the Tales (The Clerk). 

" Ther is, at the West syde of Itaille, 

Doun at the roote of Yesulus the colde, 

A lusty playne, abundant of vitaille, 

Wher many a tour and toun thou mayst biholde, 

That founded were in tyme of fadres olde, 

And many another delitable syghte, 

And Saluces this noble contree hyghte.®" ^ is called 

—The Clerkes Tale. 
"In olde dayes of the kyng Arthour, 

Of which that Britouns speken gret honour, 

Al was this lond fulfilled of fayrie; 

The elf-queen, with her joly compaignye, 

Dauncede ful oft in many a grene mede. 

This was the old oppynyoun, as I rede ; 

I speke of manj^ hundrid yer ago ; 

But now can no man see noon elves mo. 

For now the grete charite and prayeres 

Of lymytours and other holy freres, 

That seclien every lond and every streem. 

As thik as motis in the sonne-beem, 

Blessynge halles, chambres, kichenes, and boures, 

Citees, burghes, castles hihe and toures, 

Thropes,- bernes,^ shepnes and dayeries — ''Villages, ^harns 

That makith that ther ben no fayeries." 

—The Wgf of Bathes Tale. 

OTHER POETS 

The next literary work of any note in the English language after 
The Saxon Chronicle ^as T/^e Brut of Layamon. Exactly half a 



OTHER POETS 37 

century lies between them. The Chronicle ends witli the year 
1154; The Brut was written in 1205. The Brut consists of more 
than 16,000 long lines, mostly of old Anglo-Saxon alliterative 
verse, and it is the first English poem after the Norman Conquest. 
Layamon is thus the successor of Csedmon. His vocabulary is all 
but as pure as Csedmon's, but the Old English grammar had sus- 
tained such a shock from the Norman impact that Layamon's 
English looks like another language from Caedmon's. Layamon 
tells us all we know about himself, and how he undertook his 
work and carried it out, in the opening lines of his poem. We 
learn that he was a studious and pious priest belonging to a noble 
church at Ernleigh, on the banks of Severn in Worcestershire ; 
that he was smitten with an ambition to tell the noble deeds of 
England (he means Britain) and trace the English (British) race 
from its heroic origin in ancient Troy ; that first it was necessary 
to collect the materials for such a histor}'-, and that accordingly he 
set off on a pilgrimage over the whole land searching for manu- 
scripts and oral traditions bearing on the subject. He found 
three important books, and on these, but especially on Wace's 
French historical romance of Le Brut cVAngleierre (a paraphrase 
of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Chronicle), he based his English 
version of the British legend which regards Brutus, the great- 
grandson of ^neas, as the founder of tlie British race and nation. 
Speaking of himself in the third person, he thus describes his rev- 
erent joy in the work of translating: "Layamon laid down those 
books and turned over their leaves. He looked on them lovingly 
(may the Lord be merciful to him!). Then pen he took in hand, 
and wrote a parchment-book, and placed the words together, and 
compressed the three books into one." The poem, besides being 
popular in its day, was a storehouse for future writers. Here may 
be found the stories of Shakespeare's plays of King Lear and 
Cijmbeline, and the original of Milton's legend of Sabrina in Comus. 
The Brut comes down to the death of the Welsh prince Cadwalla- 
der in the end of the seventh century, 

Orm, a clerical brother and contemporary of Layamon, wrote a 
religious book consisting of an unrhymed metrical version of 
those portions of the New Testament that were read in church in 
the service of each day, along with homilies, also in metre, which, 
like the modern sermon, were meant to explain and apply selected 
portions of the sacred text. The work gets over the daily service 
for a month only. It is written in pure English without French 
admixture. The spelling is a strange feature of the book, the 
writer doubling certain letters according to a fixed principle of his 
own invention. He admonishes future transcribers to follow his 
spelling, "forr he ne mayy nohht elless onn Ennglissh writenn 



38 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

ribht te word." Orm's book was named Ormulum because he 
wrote it ; it appeared about the year 1215 — the year of the Great 
Charter. 

To Thomas Rymour of Ercildoune, commonly known as Thomas 
the Rhymer, Sir Walter Scott assigned the metrical romance of 
Sir Tristrem. Ercildoune, now Earlston, is in Berwickshire, not 
far from Melrose. Thomas in popular belief had a remarkable 
gift of prophecy. He flourished about the end of the thirteenth 
century. 

In the earlier half of the fourteenth century there lived in Ham- 
pole, near Doncaster, a hermit named Eichard Kolle, who, be- 
sides rendering parts of Scripture into English prose, wrote a 
rather dull moral poem called The Pricke of Conscience. It is in 
rhyming couplets, and describes heaven as a place where " there 
is bright somer ever to se, and never is wynter in that countree." 

A lyrical poet, Laurence Minot, sang the great battles of Ed- 
ward III., including the victories at Halidon Hill, Cressy, and 
Neville's Cross, in ten rhymed ballads of different measures. He 
was contemporary with RoUe. 

Two anonymous poems, belonging probably to the middle or 
end of the thirteenth century, are worthy of mention here : the 
one, The Land of Cockaygne (or Kitchen Land), describes a sensual 
paradise for monks, in which roasted geese fly about crying 
Oeese! all hot! all hot! — and the other, The Owl and the Nightin- 
gale, sometimes assigned to Nicholas of Guildford, is an argument 
between the birds as to their respective merits. Both are in the 
rhymed octosyllabic measure of the YvQnch fabliaux. 



PROSE WRITERS 

Sir John Mandeville informs us that he was born in the 
town of St. Albans, passed the sea in 1322, and traversed 
many distant provinces, kingdoms, and isles, including Tur- 
key, Persia, India, and even China, as well as Upper and 
Lower Egypt. Grown tired and satisfied with travel, he 
came home after an absence of thirty -four years, and found 
amusement in writing an account of all he had seen and 
felt, first in Latin, then in French, and finally in English, 
" that every man of my nacioun may undirstonde it." The 
book, entitled Voyage and Travel, is written with spirit and 
fluency ; it is wonderfully accurate where he states his actual 
experiences, and wonderfully credulous where he does not. 



PROSE WRITERS 39 

It was very popular. He was probably about twenty-two 
years of age when he first went a-roaming, having previously 
prepared himself by the study of medicine. He died at 
Liege in 1372. 

John Wyclif (1324-1384) was in everything but the name 
the first English Protestant. He not only prepared the way 
for the Reformation of the sixteenth century by trans- 
lating the Vulgate, or St. Jerome's Latin version of the 
Bible, into English in 1383, but he also actually began 
that great movement by denying the papal supremacy 
and doctrines, notably the doctrine of transubstantiation. 
He refused to be silenced by the Church, and appealed 
to the people in numerous polemical tracts and sermons, 
penned in strong, racy English, which the plainest peas- 
ant could understand and feel. He was of Yorkshire ori- 
gin ; was educated at Oxford, where he held, among other 
honors, the mastership of Balliol College ; and was rector of 
Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, from 1377. Shut out from 
Oxford in 1381, he spent the last three years of his life in 
quiet pastoral work and Bible translating at Lutterworth. 
He might have sat for the portrait of Chaucer's parson. No 
fewer than five papal bulls were issued against him; but 
thanks to the protection of John of Gaunt, he remained 
comparatively unmolested, and died peacefully in his bed on 
the last day of 1384. By his Bible he was one of the makers 
of English prose, and he originated the pamphlet form of 
literature. 



I. Extended List of Writers from 1066 to 1400 

(A) Latin "Writers 

1095-1148. William of Malmesbury (Anglo-Norman), historian. 
1110 ?-1154. Geoffrey of Monmouth (Welsh), legendary historian. 
—1154—. Henry of Huntingdon (Anglo-Norman), historian. 
1100-1159. Nicholas Breakspeare (English), Pope Adrian IV., 
theologian. 
1119 ?-1170. Thomas a Becket (English), Archbishop. 
1210. Walter Map, poet and historian. 



40 THE SECOND PERIOD, 1066-1400 

1146-1223. Giraldus Cambrensis (Welsh), Bishop, historian. 
1175 ?-1253. Kobert Grost^te, Bishop, theologian. 
1259. Matthew Paris, theologian. 
1290 ? Michael Scott (Scottish), philosopher. 
1214-1292. Roger Bacon (English), philosopher. 
1265-1808. John Duns Scotus, scholastic philosopher. / 
1280-1347. William Occam, scholastic philosopher. 
— 1886 — . John Fordun (Scottish), chronicler. 

(B) Early English "Writers 

1154. Writers in the Saxon Chronicle. 
— 1200 — . Layamon, metrical chronicler. 
— 1250 — . Orm, metrical religious writer. 
— 1250 — . Author of Ancren Riwl, ecclesiastical writer. 
1175 ?-1258. Robert Grost^te, Bishop, poet. 

— 1278 — . Robert of Gloucester, metrical chronicler. 
1300 ? Thomas of Ercildoune (Scottish), rhymer. 
— 1803 — . Robert Manning, or Robert de Brunne, metrical 
chronicler. 
1349. Richard Rolle, poet. 
— 1350 — . Laurence Minot, poet. 
1300 ?-1372. Sir John Mandeville, writer of travels. 
1820?-1400? William Laugland, poet. 

—1350—. John de Trevisa, chronicler. 
1322 ?-1395. John Barbour (Scottish), poet. 
1324-1384. John Wyclif, theologian. 
1323-1408. John Gower, poet. 
1340-1400. Geoffrey Chaucer, poet. 



(C) French Writers 

1068-1135. King Henry I., Beauclerk. 
1180. Wace. 

1210. Walter Map (or Mapes). 
(And many other waiters of metrical chronicles, fabliaux, and 
romances. ) 

II. Chronological List of Writings from 1066 to 1400 

1121 ? Peterborough part of the Saxon Chronicle began. 
1144 ? William of Malmesbury's Historia Novella (in Latin) ; 

his De Gestis Regum Anglorum about twenty years 

earlier. 



LIST OF WRITERS FROM 1066 TO 1400 41 

1147. Geoffrey of Monmoutli's Historia Regum BritanniEe. 

1154 ? Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Angloriim. 
1154. End of the Saxon Chronicle (at Peterborough). 

1155 ? Wace's Brut d'Angleterre. Giraldus Cambrensis's De- 

scriptio Cambriae. 

1180 ? Walter Map's Lancelot du Lac, Queste do St. Graal, 
Mort Artur. 

1305 ? Layamon's Brut (in English). 

1215 ? Orm's Ormulum (in English). 

1225 ? Ancren Riwle. [Dante born in 1^65.] 

1268. Roger Bacon's Opus Majus ; Michael Scott's Musa 
Philosophica. 
1270-80. Havelok the Dane (in English) ; about the same time, 
Thomas the Rhymer's Sir Tristrem ; also (in Latin) 
Gesta Romanorum ; also The Owl and the Nightin- 
gale, a lyrical idyl in the Dorset dialect. 

1298. Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle (in English); also his 
Metrical Lives of the Saints. 

1300 ? John Duns Scotus's Distinctiones. 

1303. Robert Manning's Handlyng Sinne. [Boccaccio born 
in 1313.] 
1380-40 ? Richard Hampole's Prick of Conscience. 

1352. Laurence Minot's Songs on the battles of Edward IH. 

1356. Mandeville's Voyage and Travel. 

1360. Fordun's Scotichronicon (in Latin). 
1362-63. Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman. About the same 
time, the Romances of Sir Gawaiu and Morte d' Arthur 
(in English). Also some early poems of Chaucer, 
(in French and Latin) of Gower. 

1375. Barbour's Bruce. Langland's Vision. Chaucer's 
House of Fame, etc. 

1380. Wyclif's Translation of Bible. 

1393 ? Gower's Confessio Amantis (in English). Chaucer's 
Canterbury Tales finished. 



1400-1580 

FKOM THE DEATH OP CHAUCER TO THE APPEAEANCE 
OP SPENSER 

The range is over one hundred and eighty years, and ex- 
tends from the commencement of the Plantagenet rule of 
the house of Lancaster through the Wars of the Roses, and 
the brief supremacy of the house of York, onward into the 
more settled government of the Tudor dynasty, to the mid- 
dle of the reign of Elizabeth. The succession of sovereigns 
in the period is as follows : House of Lancaster — Henry 
IV., Henry V., and Henry VL ; House of York — Edward 
IV., Edward V., and Richard III. ; Tudors — Henry VII., 
Henry VIIL, Edward VL, Mary, and Elizabeth. The chief 
events of English history, affecting more or less the literary 
growth of the period, are here presented as they occurred in 
the successive reigns : 

Reign of Henry IV., 1399-1413,— Murder of Richard H. in Ponte- 
fract dungeons. Conspiracy and rebellion of the Earl of Nor- 
thumberland, ''Hotspur" Percy, Glendower, etc., and battle at 
Shrewsbury. Capture and imprisonment (for nineteen years) of 
Prince James of Scotland, driven by storm on the English coast. 
Persecution of the Lollards (of whom the chief was Sir John Old- 
castle) all through the reign. Dissolute conduct of Prince Hal. 

Reign of Henry V., 1413-1422. — Persecution of Lollards continued, 
and Oldcastle burned as a heretic. War with France: Agincourt, 
1415 ; Treaty of Troyes, 1420— Henry declared heir and appointed 
Regent of France, and married to Catherine; France conquered. 

Reigns of Henry VI., 1422-1461; Edward IV., 1461-1483; Edward 
v., 1483; Richard III., 1483-1485.— War with France ; successful, 
notwithstanding the heroic mission of Joan d'Arc, until the death 
of John of Bedford ; the English driven from all France, Calais 
excepted, by the year 1453 ; France lost. Thereafter, Wars of the 
Roses, from 1455 to 1485 ; battle of St. Albans ; of Northampton ; 



HISTORICAL SURVEY 43 

of Wakefield ; of Mortimer's Cross (Yorkists victorious, and Ed- 
ward IV. proclaimed king) ; of Towton ; tlien rivalry of Nevilles 
and Woodvilles, followed by more fighting ; at Barnet and at 
Tewkesbury the Lancastrians finally scattered, their confiscated 
estates giving great wealth to the king. The Crown thus inde- 
pendent of the Commons, and as the baronage was destroyed in 
the Wars, the monarchy became absolute. Ambition and crimes 
of Richard of Gloucester. The Babes in the Tower. Buckingham's 
revolt and execution. Battle of Bosworth. Despotism established. 
Note. — From 1474 onward to the end of the period, and six 

years past it, William Caxton was industriously working 

his printing-press at Westminster, 
Henry VII., 1485-1509. — Impostures of Simnel and Warbeck. 
Revolution in warfare by the introduction of artillery. Growing 
absolutism ; suppression of liveried retainers ; institution of Star 
Chamber. Marriage of Princess Margaret to James IV. of Scot- 
land. 

Note. — In this reign the art of printing was developed ; and 

important geographical discoveries were made — notably 

West Indies, Newfoundland, and the route to East Indies 

by the Cape. 
Henry VIII., 1509-1547.— Battle of the Spurs andFlodden (1513) ; 
Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520) ; English Reformation ; the 
English Bible ; the Pilgrimage of Grace ; suppression of the 
monasteries ; the king despotic. 

Edward VI., 1547-1553. — Battle of Pinkie. Reformation con- 
tinues ; the Prayer-book. Kett's rising. Establishment of gram- 
mar-schools. 

Mary, 1553-1558. — Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days' Queen. 
Wyatt's "rebellion." Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain, son 
of the great emperor Charles V. Restoration of the Catholic re- 
ligion. Cranmer executed, and Cardinal Pole made primate. 
The Persecutions (1555). Loss of Calais. 

Elizabeth, 1558-1580 [-1603].— Protestantism restored; the Thirty- 
nine Articles (1563). Mary Queen of Scots a captive in England 
in 1568. Elizabeth excommunicated by the Pope in 1570. Eng- 
land the champion of European Protestantism, 1572 (after Mas- 
sacre of St. Bartholomew) ; English volunteers aiding the Nether- 
lands against Spain in 1577. 

Note. — From 1568 the voyages of Hawkins and Drake ; and 

between 1577-80 Drake sailed round the world. 

In Scottisli history the range of this period is from near 
the tenth year of the reign of Robert IIL, through the 



44 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

reigns of James I. (1406-1437), James 11. (1437-1460), 
James III. (1460-1488), James IV. (1488-1513), James V. 
(1513-1542), and Mary (1542-1567), to the thirteenth year 
of the reign of James VI. The chief events of the time 
were : Battle of Homildon, where Percy took the Douglas 
prisoner ; starvation of David of Rothesay in Falkland Pal- 
ace ; descent of Donald of the Isles upon Aberdeenshire ; 
battle of Harlaw; return of James I. from England after 
nineteen years' absence ; murder of James I. in Perth 
Convent ; murder of the Douglas brothers at Edinburgh ; 
murder of the next Douglas by the king at Stirling ; James 
II.'s death at the siege of Roxburgh Castle ; execution of 
James III.'s minions at Lauder Bridge ; battle of Sauchie, 
and murder of the king ; Perkin Warbeck's arrival in Scot- 
land, and invasion of England on his behalf ; foundation of 
a Scottish navy ; James IV.'s marriage to Margaret Tudor. 
Disputes with England: battle of Flodden, 1513; James 
V.'s differences with Henry VIII., and rout of Scottish army 
at Sol way Moss ; battle of Pinkie in 1547 ; assassination of 
Cardinal Beaton ; Mary of Scotland's return from France ; 
destruction of churches and monasteries; Scottish Refor- 
mation ; murder of Rizzio ; of Darnley ; imprisonment of the 
queen ; battle of Langside, and flight of Queen Mary to 
England, where she was at once made a close prisoner ; Prot- 
estantism established under Regent Murray ; his assassina- 
tion in 1570,' civil war in Scotland; death of John Knox in 
1572 ^ regency of Morton. 

Note. — Printing was introduced into Scotland by Chepman and 
Myllar in 1508. Universities were founded at St. Andrews in 1411, 
Glasgow in 1450, Aberdeen in 1494, and Edinburgh in 1582. In 
1532 the Court of Session was founded. The National Presbyterian 
Church was established by Act of Parliament in 1567, and confirmed 
by charter in 1592. 

INTRODUCTION 

In a general survey of the field of English literature 
of this period, the most obvious fact is its comparative 
barrenness. It boasts of no great name like that of 



INTRODUCTION 45 

Chaucer, which gives such distinction to the immediate- 
ly preceding period ; still less does it approach the ex- 
cellence of the immediately succeeding period, glorious 
with the famous names of Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare, 
and Milton. It has indeed been set down as the most 
barren period in our literary history. In a general sense 
the statement is true ; but it is apt to be misunderstood. 
In the first place, it was a transition period, in which, if 
little of outstanding worth was achieved, ample and im- 
portant preparation was made for later achievement. 
It was the sowing-time, w^hich made possible the rich 
harvest of the Elizabethan age. In the second place, 
the appearance of barrenness was confined to England, 
and did not extend to Scotland. On the contrary, the 
period exhibits a literary productivity in Scotland which 
may fairly be described as phenomenally active and 
brilliant. It is not till we come to the middle of the 
eighteenth century that we find in Scotland such activity 
and brilliancy of work again attending the cultivation 
of letters. The greatest name of the period is that of 
a Scotsman — William Dunbar. His is the most promi- 
nent name in poetry between Chaucer and Spenser. 
And not only does he rise above the best English poet- 
names of the period — those of Skelton, Howard, and 
Gascoigne — but he is the central figure in a large and 
respectable group of Scottish verse-writers, of whom, as 
far as we can judge — for the works of many of them 
have perished — Blind Harry, Henryson, Gavin Douglas, 
and Sir David Lindsay were the chief. In his Lament 
for the Makaris Dunbar enumerates a list of eighteen 
famous contemporary Scottish poets, of quite half of 
whom not a line, or only the veriest fragments, have 
been found. Yet Lindsay regarded two of those lost 
poets, Kennedy and Quentin Shaw, both from Ayrshire, 



46 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

as worthy to be called great, while Gavin Douglas 
thought them the rivals of Dunbar, and placed them, 
with him in the Muses' Court in his own j^oem of The 
Palace of Honor. Their verses were lost and their fame 
forgotten in the long troubles that came upon Scotland 
after Flodden. 

The poetry of the period exhibits three distinct phases. 
There is first the continued influence of Chaucer, visible 
in the imitative work of such immediate followers as 
Occleve and Lydgate, and in such doubtfully assigned 
poems as The Flower and the Leaf and Tlie Cuckoo and 
the Nightingale / in the work which came later of Ste- 
phen Hawes, author of The Pastime of Pleasure ; and in 
part of the work of Skelton, Sackville, and Gascoigne, 
and the Scottish poets generally from King James to Sir 
David Lindsay. The influence of Chaucer reveals itself 
here in the romantic strain of allegorical and the humor- 
ous strain of realistic narrative, and in the occasional 
employment of his seven-lined stanza, known as rhyme 
royal. The second phase shows itself in Skelton's at- 
tempt in his later satirical work at an original measure, 
known by his name, of short and repeatedly rhyming 
lines, exceedingly j)opular for a while, but dying out 
without followers as the history of English poetry en- 
tered upon its third phase. This third phase was due to 
Italian influence, notably that of Petrarch, acting upon 
the genius of such men as Wyatt and Lord Surrey. 
They inaugurated the amourist school of poetry in Eng- 
land — a school which includes the later names of Sidney, 
Spenser, and Drummond of Hawthornden, and also, to 
some extent, Shakespeare. With the amourist poets 
love — regarded rather as a theme for pensive elaboration 
than a passion — was the dominant subject, and regular 
stanzas were the necessary form, the sonnet being favor- 



INTRODUCTION 47 

ite. Blank-verse was introduced by Surrey, and applied 
to dramatic composition by Sackville. All through the 
period, unaffected by phase or fashion, the anonymous 
Ballad ran its own free course with wild, peculiar grace, 
and kept the spirit of natural poetry alive in the heart 
of the people. To this period belong the ballads of 
Otterhurn and Chevy Chase {chevachie)^ The Nut-Brown 
Maid, and Robin Hood, the Sherwood outlaw. 

Besides showing Chaucerian influence, the Scottish 
poetry of this period already revealed those features 
which are characteristic of the whole body and history 
of Scottish poetry. They stand out most prominently in 
Dunbar, and include a love of wild nature accompanied 
with a vivid power of presentation and a strong sense of 
the beauty of color; and a vigorous and lively humor, 
expressing itself in abrupt and daring transitions from 
one mood to another. A trace of French lyrical in- 
fluence can be detected in Dunbar ; and Henryson has 
the merit of commencing the pastoral and the moral tale. 

A special feature of the literary work of this period 
was the vast amount and great variety of translation. 
Typical work of this kind, having important influence on 
later literature, includes Mallory's Morte d'' Arthur, Gavin 
Douglas's Scottish version of the ^neid, and Tyndale's 
English Bible. Such translations were the supply of 
scholars to the public demand for more knowledge — a 
demand which sprang up on the revival of learning, and 
which the invention of printing made it easy to meet. 
The revival of learning dates from the entry of the 
Turk into Europe in 1453, and the concomitant flight of 
classical scholars from Constantinople westward over 
Southern Europe. More fugitive scholars brought with 
them the precious MSS. of antiquity, and partly from 
a love of learning, partly as a means of maintaining them- 



48 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

selves, opened schools in towns like Florence and Paris, 
where they taught to students, who came flocking from 
all quarters to hear, the literary masterpieces of the 
classical age. The literature of ancient Greece came 
upon Western Europe like the revelation of day. The 
long night of a thousand years known as the Dark Ages 
was ended. Modern times were dawning. 

While translation was one effect of the revival of learn- 
ing, teaching was another. Schools were established 
everywhere. As many as twenty grammar-schools were 
founded in England during the generation just preceding 
the Reformation. Men like Grocyn and Linacre, Colet 
and More, led and sought to direct the educational move- 
ment; it was encouraged by Erasmus, and munificently 
patronized by Wolsey and Henry VIII. Classical study 
became fashionable; persons of rank, even princes and 
princesses, became ardent students; and the teacher 
everywhere was honored, and wielded a wide influence. 
In England the revival of learning took a social, religious, 
and political rather than a literary direction, and for a 
time indeed it was narrowed to religious controversy, but 
revived again after the severer struggle had passed and 
religious freedom was established in the reign of Eliza- 
beth. One great benefit of classical study upon our lit- 
erature was to supply our authors with the best foreign 
models for their inspiration or imitation. But it should 
not be overlooked that the mechanical service of Caxton, 
in reproducing the best works of Chaucer and other na- 
tive authors, was scarcely less valuable. He kept alive 
among the peo'ple the love of poetry, maintaining the 
continuity of our national poetry ; and he helped to 
make possible the Elizabethan age. 

The roots of the English drama are in this period. 
Many years were to pass before the drama became liter- 



INTRODUCTION 49 

aiy. In its original form it was a popular means of re- 
ligions instruction and social entertainment. It was in- 
troduced by the clergy ; the priests were the first actors, 
and the churches the first theatres. The subjects were 
taken from Scripture history and the lives of the saints, 
and the representations were known as Mysteries and 
Miracle Plays. They were already acted in England in 
the early part of the twelfth century ; but it was not till 
the fourteenth century that they were made quite intelli- 
gible to the public by the use of English words. At 
that time it became common for the members of town 
guilds to undertake the performance, but the Church 
was still the producer of those religious plays. In 1327 
or 1328 the Pope gave leave to Ralph Higden, a monk 
near Chester, to write a set of twenty-five miracle plays 
in English for the guild brethren of the town. The set 
continued to be acted for many successive years. It be- 
gan with the Downfall of Lucifer, presented by the tan- 
ners, and wound up a few days later with Doomsday, en- 
acted by the weavers. The set is preserved ; and there 
are besides other two complete sets still remaining — the 
Wakefield (commonly called the Townley) set of thirty- 
two plays, and the Coventry set of forty-two. Miracle 
plays were common in Chaucer's day, and in Dunbar's 
a century later. The Reformation was not hostile to 
them, and they survived till Elizabeth's time, when they 
were killed off by the more brilliant and interesting sec- 
ular drama. It should be remembered that Milton's first 
intention with the subject of Paradise Lost was to treat 
it as a miracle play, and he had actually made a com- 
mencement. A miracle play is still acted every tenth 
year at Ober-Ammergau, in Bavaria. 

Miracle plays did not give way to moralities ; but 
the morality came later than the miracle play, and marks 



50 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

a new step in the direction of the English drama. They 
seem to have come in during the long reign of Henry 
VI. in the fifteenth century. They taught by means 
of acted allegories some lesson of duty or virtuous life. 
The characters were the virtues or the vices, or even 
qualities and conditions of life and character, and might 
include such personages as Pity, Perseverance, Death, 
Riches, Contemplation, Confession, Imagination, Free- 
will, etc. In the end the virtue triumphed, and the 
vice (out of Avhich grew the clown of comedy) gave 
amusement to the spectators by tormenting the devil. 
The titles of two moral plays popular in Henry VIII.'s 
reign were The Cradle of Security and The Marriage 
of Wisdo?n and Wit. The moral plays seem to have 
been too dull and didactic for popular favor, till the 
practice grew up of enlivening them by interj)olated 
humorous scenes, solely designed to hold the audience 
together. These interludes were sometimes coarse be- 
yond expression, and with their suggested and flaunted 
immoralities offered a strange contrast to the morality 
they were designed to lighten. 

At last John Heywood wrote independent interludes, 
acted by themselves, and purely for the sake of amuse- 
ment. They were farcical, and were immensely popu- 
lar at the court of Henry VIII. His interlude of The 
Four P'^s is a good sj)ecimen of this elementary kind 
of dramatic writing. Partly from the interlude, which, 
whatever its poverty, was at least an English growth, 
and partly from such plays of Plautus and Terence as 
were read and occasionally acted at the chief public 
schools, sprang up, about the middle of the sixteenth 
century, our native English comedy. The first English 
comedy, Ralph Roister Doister, was acted not later than 
1551; it was the work of Nicholas Udall, head-master 



POETS— JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 



51 



of Eton School. About ten years later — that is, in 1562 
— Gorhoduc (or Ferrex and Porrex)^ the first English 
tragedy, was acted. It was the joint composition of 
Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton, and was modelled 
on the lines of Seneca and the Greek writers of tragedy ; 
but fortunately English tragic drama did not develop 
on those lines. 

CLASSIFICATION OF THE PEINCIPAL AUTHORS 

I. Poets. — King James I. of Scotland, John Skelton, 
William Dunbar, and Henry Howard (Earl of Surrey). 
Next after these may be named — Henryson, Gavin 
Douglas, Lindsay, Wyatt, Gascoigne, and Sack- 
ville. 
II. Prose Writers. — Sir Thomas More and Roger Ascham. 

Next after these may he named — Mallory, Caxton, 
Tyndale, Latimer, Knox, Foxe, and Holinshed. 
III. Dramatic Writers. — John Heywood, Nicholas Udall, 
Thomas Sackville (Lord Buckhurst), and John Still. 

POETS 

One of the most accomplished poets of his day was James 
I. of Scotland (1394-1437), the son and successor of Robert 
IIL, and younger brother of the unfortunate David of Rothe- 
say, whose tragic death has been so powerfully and patheti- 
cally described in The Fair Maid of Perth. The story of 
the life of the Poet King reads like a romance. The details 
of the former part of it are supplied by Wyntoun's Chronicle 
and The Ki}ig''s Quair. The latter part is matter of Scot- 
tish history. At the age of ten he was sent by his father 
to France, partly fo be educated, but chiefly to be beyond 
reach of his uncle, the crafty and ambitious Duke of Albany. 
The ship in which he was carried was captured by the Eng- 
lish off the Yorkshire coast, and Henry IV., the King of 
England, detained him, for political purposes, a prisoner in 
Windsor Tower. His father died broken-hearted at the 
news of his captivity, and James now (1406) became King 



52 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

of Scotland, but a king without a crown. His captivity 
continued for nearly eighteen years from this date — through 
the rest of the reign of Henry IV., the whole reign of 
Henry V., and into the second year of the reign of Henry 
VI. Apart from the loss of his liberty, James had nothing 
to complain of at the English court ; he was well educated 
in all the arts and exercises of mind and body befitting his 
rank. It would seem that he even accompanied Henry V. 
to France, and took an active part in the English conquest 
of that country. The summer of the year 1423 brought 
with it the great romance of his life, told by himself in one 
of the sweetest passages of The King's Quair. Looking 
wearily out of a window in Windsor Tower one morning 
in May, he saw in the garden below " the fairest and the 
freshest younge flower" in the person of a beautiful lady 
of the court, with whom he fell instantly and completely 
in love. It was the king's cousin. Lady Joan Beaufort. 
The attachment was encouraged, in the hope of a friendly 
alliance with Scotland. The lady returned James's affection 
with equal devotion, and the marriage was celebrated early 
in 1424. In April of the same year he was restored to 
Scotland, and shortly afterwards was crowned with his queen 
at Scone. He made a vigorous ruler. He enforced justice 
till "the key kept the castle and the rush-bush the cow." 
He founded schools, he encouraged learning, he introduced 
new and useful arts for the protection and development of 
his country ; but in the course of these reforms, carried 
through with relentless energy, he incurred the hatred of 
a faction of disaffected nobles, of whom the chief was his 
own uncle Walter, Earl of AthoU. With the great body of 
the people, whose sentiments he learned by mingling with 
them in disguise, he soon became extremely popular. In 
the end, his enemies overmatched him by treachery, and he 
was cruelly slain in the convent of the Black Friars at Perth, 
in circumstances familiar to every reader of Scottish his- 
tory. 

King James I. is remembered in literary history for The 
King's Quair, Chrisfs Kirk on the Green, Peebles at the Flag 



JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND 



53 



— though the last two have been denied to him, but on no 
sufficient grounds ; and for many cantilence that have per- 
ished or are only known anonymously. Christ'' s Kirk and 
Peebles at the Play are the first Scottish poems of that hu- 
morous kind, descriptive of boisterous rustic mirth and mis- 
chief, which Allan Ramsay, and especially Burns, have made 
so popular in Scotland — the former in three additional cantos 
to the original poem of King James, the latter in Hallow 
E^en and the Holy Fair. They are written in a peculiar 
rollicking measure with double rhymes, and are half lyrical, 
half narrative. The King's Quair is a poem in the Chau- 
cerian manner and measure, and the subject is the story of 
his own romantic passion for Lady Joan Beaufort. The poem 
is partly descriptive and partly allegorical ; and while the 
allegorical part, though in the approved manner of the 
times, is sufficiently tedious, the descriptive portions are in 
many separate passages of such singular vividness, sincerity, 
and beauty as to win at once the reader's interest and sym- 
pathy. Though an imitation of Chaucer, whom James 
studied and admired, the poem is not a mere imitation. 
There is ever and again an original strain of reflective feel- 
ing which has a strangely modern sound. The measure 
was the invention of Chaucer, but is known, in honor of 
King James, as rhyme royal. It consists of a seven-lined 
stanza of five iambi, with the rhymes occurring according to 
the formula a b a b b c c. The poem was written in the 
summer months of 1423, and runs to nearly two hundred 
stanzas. The dedication, which closes the poem, is to 
Chaucer and Gower. To them 



"I recommend my book in lines seven, 
And eke their souls unto the bliss of heaven.' 



"Bewailing in my chamber thus allone, 
Despeired of all joye and remedye, 
For-tirit ^ of my thoght, and wo begone, ^ Very tired 
Unto the wyndow gan I walk in hye,^ '^ haste 
To se the warld and folk that went forby; 



54 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

As for the tyme, though I of mirthis fude 

Myght haue no more, to luke it did me gude, . . . 

"And there-with kest I doun myn eye ageyne, 
Quhare as I sawe, wallving vnder the toure, 

Full secretly new cummyn hir to pleyne,^ ^ play 

The fairest or the freschest 3ong6 floure 
That euer 1 sawe, me thoght, before that lioure, 

For quhich sodayne abate, anon astert 

The blude of all my body to my hert. 

"And though I stude abaisit tho a lyte,^ -then a Utile 
No wonder was; for-quhy my wittis all 

Were so ouercom with plesance and delyte, 
Onely throu latting of myn eyen fall. 
That sudaynly my hert became hir thrall, 

For euer, of free wyll ; for of manace 

There was no takyn ^ in hir suete face. ^ token 

"And in my hede I drewe ryght hastily, 
And eft-sonSs I lent it forth ageyne. 
And sawe hir walk, that"* verray womanly, ^ so 

With no wight mo, hot onely wommen tueyne. 
Than gan I study e iu my-self and seyne,^ ^say 

' A ! suete, ar 3e a warldly creature, 
Or heavenly thing in likenesse of nature?'" 

—The King's Quair. 



John Skelton (1460 ?-1529), scholar, humorist, and boon 
companion, was one of the most popular Englishmen of his 
day. The place of his birth is conjectural — perhaps Cum- 
berland, more probably Norfolk; but it is known that both 
Oxford and Cambridge claimed and honored him as a dis- 
tinguished son ; and that he was rector of Diss in Norf olkshire 
early in the sixteenth century. Special proofs of his learn- 
ing are found in the testimony of Erasmus, who styled him 
" the grace and glory of English scholars," and in the fact 
that he was appointed tutor to the name-son and successor 
of Henry VII. His humor, which was of the Rabelaisian 
order — spontaneous, exuberant, and coarse — was long a no- 
torious tradition, and still lives in his popular poems. His 



JOHN SKELTON 55 

serious poems, written in the reign of Henry VII., are dull 
enough, though they were no doubt considered scholarly 
work in their day ; they include some frigid elegies, and a 
long, elaborate morality entitled Magnificence^ in the alle- 
gorical style of Chaucer. But in the reign of Henry VIII. 
a spirit of eccentricity and fun seized his pen, and he dashed 
off long yards of short-lined extempore verse, which at once 
took the public ear, and which, though it looks like doggerel 
in the part, is even yet entertaining in the piece. The best 
examples of his humorous verse are The Tunning [z.e.. Brew- 
ing] of Elinor Rumming, a comic description of a low ale- 
house and its female frequenters, and The Death of Philip 
Sjmrrow, a sprightly poem of nearly fourteen hundred lines, 
in which a young girl amuses her grief for the death of her 
pet sparrow with a thousand fancies and reminiscences. A 
great deal of Skelton's humor is satirical, and the satire of 
The Bowge of Court occupies a position midway between his 
serious and his humorous verse. The clergy, as well as the 
court, are attacked in Colin Clout^ and Wolsey in Why 
come ye not to Court? Wolsey seems to have incurred 
Skelton's resentment by disappointing him in a promise of 
preferment, and to have felt his attack, which is undeniably 
scurrilous, so keenly that he ordered the daring rhymer's 
arrest, and would have treated him with the utmost rigor 
had not the sanctuary of Westminster been at hand to pro- 
tect him. As it was, Skelton was a prisoner in the sanct- 
uary till his death — for the cardinal outlived him two years. 
Skelton's position in the history of English poetry is pe- 
culiar. Like an islet half-way between two island groups, 
he stands alone between the decaying influence of the Chau- 
cerian school and the formation of the new Italian school 
under Howard. He owns the influence of Chaucer in his 
earlier serious poems on religious and moral subjects ; but 
in his humorous satires, written expressly in the rough ver- 
nacular to catch at the dawn of the Reformation the popular 
ear, he invents a style which, though having no regular 
form, is not without melody, and is far from being deficient 
in rude force and effectiveness. 



56 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

"Merry Margaret, Gentle as falcon. 

As midsummer flower, Or hawk of the tower ; 

Gentle as falcon, As patient and as still, 

Or hawk of the tow^er, And as full of good-will, 

With solace and gladness, As fair Isiphil, 
Much mirth and no madness, Coliander, 

All good and no badness; Sweet Pomander, 

So joyously, Good Cassauder; 

So maidenly. Steadfast of thought. 

So womanly. Well made, well wrought, 

Her demeaning. Far may be sought, 

In everything. Ere you can find 

Far, far passing So courteous, so kind, 

That I can indite. As merry Margaret, 

Or sulflce to write, This midsummer flower. 

Of Merry Margaret, Gentle as falcon, 

As midsummer flower, Or hawk of the tower." 

— May Margaret. 

The greatest poet of the period, and the greatest that 
Scotland has ever produced, Burns alone excepted, was 
William Dunbar (1460?-1513), born probably in East Lo- 
thian, a cadet of the historical house of March, and educated 
at St. Andrews, where he graduated M.A. in 1479. He ap- 
pears to have been destined for the Church from his infancy. 
On his nurse's knee he was dandled as " little bishop." He 
entered the Order of St. Francis, and in the gray habit of an 
itinerant friar begged and preached his way through Scotland, 
England, and Northern France. As then practised, it was a 
life of flattery, flalsehood, and deception — yet not all unholy 
either, interspersed as it was with seasons of pure and tender 
devotion. Its numerous adventures and experiences were at 
least serviceable to the future poet, bringing him into con- 
tact with many different scenes and much varied society, 
and strengthening and storing his mind with the materials 
of poetical thought. From under that gray hood a pair of 
observant eyes, the busy servants of an active and thoughtful 
brain, were quietly taking those views of nature and human 
nature which his verses yet express so freshly, because so 
truly. Before he was thirty he abandoned the order as un- 
suitable to his disposition, and we next find him following the 



WILLIAM DUNBAR 57 

scarcely less roving life of an embassy clerk. In the diplo- 
matic service of Scotland lie visited Germany, Italy, France, 
and Spain, besides England and Ireland. At last, somewhere 
near the very end of the fifteenth century, Dunbar ceased 
to wander, and settled in Edinburgh, where he became 
Court Laureate to James IV., and was by-and-by known in 
London as the Rhymer of Scotland. He was pensioned in 
1500, and kept by the king in more or less constant attend- 
ance at the new palace of Holyrood till the fatal year 1513. 
The pension, which was at first only £10 a year, rose finally 
to £80. He was still a clergyman, though he had doffed 
the regular for the secular garb, and was sustaining his heart 
with the hope of a benefice ; but the hope was continually 
deferred, and never fulfilled. In 1501 he Avas one of the 
notaries in the embassy to London, appointed to arrange 
the king's marriage with Margaret, daughter of Henry VIL 
The union was celebrated in 1503, and was the occasion of 
that excellent specimen of his "bold music," The Thistle 
and the Rose. Queen Margaret became his warm patroness 
— his " advocate both fair and sweet " — and there can be no 
doubt that if Dunbar's advancement in the direction of his 
humble ambition for independency had lain with her, there 
was hardly a benefice to which she would not have promoted 
him. But, unfortunately for the poet, the king was not 
"Joan Thamson's man," and would not be led by his wife. 
Dunbar's half-humorous, half-earnest petitions to the king 
for a " kirk " are an interesting feature of his poetry ; and 
that they remained unanswered can only be explained by 
the king's desire to keep at court as much as possible one 
whose conversational and poetical talents he appreciated so 
highly. Dunbar disappears in 1513. He probably fell, 
with other ecclesiastics, in the king's train at Flodden. His 
poems, by a strange fatality, disappeared about the same 
time, and remained lost to a country where they had been 
at first so famous, till Allan Ramsay discovered them in 
manuscript in a country-house near Edinburgh, nearly two 
hundred years afterwards. 

From his poetry one would judge Dunbar to have been a 



58 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

man of sound common-sense, enlivened with humor, and of 
generous sympathies coexisting with wide knowledge of the 
world. He preached and sought to practise the doctrine 
that it was best to be blithe ; and he sang that lightness 
of heart was better than heaviness of purse. He had his 
graver moods, but was never misanthropical or despondent. 
Dunbar's poetry admits of division into imitative and 
original verse. Chaucer was his acknowledged master. To 
his influence were owing the richly descriptive allegorical 
poem of the Thrissil and the Hose, and the even more ornate 
Golden Targe. Chaucer's methods, too, are visible in the 
vivid characterization and bold satire of the Tiva Merrit 
Women and the Wedo — unique among his poems as being 
written in the Old English alliterative measure — as well 
as in the humorous tale of the White Friars of Berwick. 
These are imitations, but they equal the craft of the master. 
Another external influence on the art of Dunbar is traceable 
to the hymns of the Church. To their influence were ow- 
ing such sweetly serious pieces as the Passion of Christ, the 
Table of Confession, Ane Ballat of our Ladye, and the gen- 
eral strain of the Lament for the Makars, with its soul- 
haunting refrain (taken from the Service for the Dead) 
'•'■ Timor mortis conturhat me." But Dunbar had also the 
daring to burlesque the Church service humorously in An- 
dro Kennedy's Testament — a macaronic set of verses — and 
almost blasphemously in the Dirige to the King at Stirling. 
Dunbar's original poems, properly so called, deal largely 
with his personal experiences. They describe the world in 
its daily-changing relations to the poet, and his reflections 
thereupon. They are for the most part short pieces, but ex- 
tremely varied in theme and method of treatment. Some of 
them are satirical, some descriptive, some lyrical, and a great 
many are didactic. They include his Friar of Tungland, 
his DeviVs Inquest, his Petition of the Gray Horse, his 
Dream and his Headache., with their Heine-like touches, his 
Twa Drouthy Cummers, and his description of the busy, 
noisy, unsavory High Street of Edinburgh ; his Dance in the 
Queen's Chamber, his Amends to the Tailors and Souters, 



WILLIAM DUNBAR 59 

and, best of all, his Meditation in Winter. This last is a 
fine poem, full of a tender, almost a tearful, sympathy with 
life and nature. It opens with a description of dark and 
drumlie days. The gloom of a Scottish winter so oppresses 
him that he has no heart for song or ballad. He cannot 
sleep at night, but turns and tosses restlessly throucvh the 
long dark hours. His spirit shrinks within him at the 
sound of wind and hail and heavy showers driving past his 
window in the darkness. He thinks, like Burns in the 
Vision^ upon his desolate and dependent condition. What 
a poor bargain he has driven with the world ! Yet he will 
not despair. He will hold Hope and Truth fast to the end, 
and let Fortune work forth her unreasonable rage. Pru- 
dence and Age come to comfort him : 

"And Prudence in my eir sayis ay, 
'Quhy wald thow hald that^ will away? ^wJiat 

Or craif that=^ thow may have no space, ^what 

Thow tending- to ane uther place, 
A journay going everie day ?' 

"And than sayis Age, 'My freind, cum neir, 
And be nocht strange, I the ^ requeir: ^thee 

Cum, brodir, by the hand me tak, 

Remember thow hes compt to mak 
OfE all thi tyme thow spendit heir.'" 

Death comes, not to terrify, perhaps, but to disturb him : 

"Syne Deid castis up his 3ettis* wyd. 
Saying, ' Thir oppin sail 3e abyd ; 

Albeid that thow were never sa stout, 

Vndir this lyntall sail thow lowt^: 
Thair is nane vther way besyd.'" 

— a Blake-like image ! His mortality haunts him, as it 
haunted Charles Lamb, in winter. jS'o New-Year's festivi- 
ties " may lat [hinder] me to remember this." The con- 
cluding stanza is characteristic : 

"3it, quhone^ the nycht begynnis to schort, ^when 

It dois my spreit sum part confort, 



60 



THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 



Off tliocht oppressit with the schouris. 
Cum, lustie syminer! with thy flouris, 
That I may leif ^ in sum disport." 



live 



Boldest of all liis original poems is liis Dance of the Seven 
Deadly Sins. Its wild imagery, its power of characteriza- 
tion, and its robust humor, touched with horror and sublim- 
ity, challenge comparison with the strongest of the humor- 
ous satires of Burns. It is indeed only on the lyrical side 
of his poetry that Dunbar is inferior to Burns. 



No stait in erd "^ heir standis sickir ^ ; 
As with the wynd wavis the wickir, ^ 
So wavis this warldis vanite ; 

Timor Mortis co7iturhat me. . . . 



"^ earth ^ sure 
'^'Willow 



■ He takis the knychtis iu to feild, 
Anarmit ^ vnder helme et scheild 
Wictour he is at all melle ^ ; 
Timor Mortis conturhat me. 



unarmed 



"That Strang vnmercifull tyrand 
Takis on the moderis breist sowkand'' 
The bab, full of beuignite ; 
Timor Mortis conturhat me. 



sucking 



"He takis the campion in the stour,^ ^ dust of battle 

The capitane closit in the tour, 
The lady in hour full of bewte ; 
Timor Mortis conturhat me." 

— Lament for the MaJcars. 



My heid did 3ak ' so 3estermcht, 
This day to mak'° that I na micht, 

So sair the magryme ^' dois me menzie, ^■ 

Perseing my brow as ony ganzie, ^^ 
That scant I luik may on the licht. 
And now, schir, '* laitlie, eftir mess, '^ 
To dyt, i« thocht I begowthe to dress, ^^ 

The sentence lay full evill till find, 

Vnsleipit iu my heid behind, 
Dullit in dulness and distres. 
Full oft at morrow I wpryse, 
Quhen that my curage sleipeing lyis; 



^ ache 

^'^ write poetry 
^^ headache ^'^pain 
^^ arrow 



15 



mass 
^^ write ^"^ hegan 
[to prepare 



WILLIAM DUNBAR gj 

For mirtb, for menstrallie and play, 
For din, nor danceing, nor deray.^ ^ noisy fun 

It will nocbt walkin^ me no wise." ^ aicaken 
— The Headache. 

"Me thocbt fresche May befoir my bed vpstude, 
In weid depaynt of mony diuerss hew, 
Sobir, beuyng, and full of mansuetude,^ ^gentleness 

In brycht atteir of flouris forgit* new, ^ made 

Hevinly of color, qubyt, reid, broun and blew, 
Balmit in dew, and gilt with Phebus bemys, 
Qubill all the houss lllumynit of bir lemys. ^ ^ beams 

" 'Slugird,' scho said, 'awalk annone for schame, 
And in my honour sum thing thow go wryt; 
The lork hes done the mirry day proclame, 
To raiss vp luvaris with confort and delyt, 
Bit nocbt incressis thy curage to indyt, 
Qubois hairt sum tyme lies glaid and blisfuU bene, 
Sangis to mak vndir the levis grene.' 

"'Qubairto,' quod I, 'sail I vpryss at morrow, 
For in this May few birdis herd I sing? 
Thai half moir causs to weip and plane thair sorrow, 
Thy air it is nocht holsum nor benyng; 
Lord Eolus dois in thy sessone ring;^ ^ reign 

So busteous ^ ar the blastis of his home, ' boisterous 

Amang thy bewis ^ to walk I half forborne.' « boughs 

"With that this lady sobirly did smyll. 
And said, ' Vpryss, and do thy observance ; 
Thow did promyt,Mn Mayis lusty whyle, ^promise 

For to discryve the Ross of most plesance. 
Go se the birdis how thay sing and dance, 
lllumynit our with orient skyis brycht, 
Annamyllit richely with new asur lycht.'" 

— The Thistle and the Rose. 

The life of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516-1547), 
is one of the romances of English history. He was the 
grandson of that Howard who, for the victory at Flodden 
Field, was made Duke of Norfolk. Among his cousins 
were two queens, wives of Henry VIII., Anne Boleyn and 
Catherine Howard. At the age of ten he became page or 



62 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

cup-bearer to the king. He was still under age when he 
married Lady Frances Yere, a daughter of the Earl of Ox- 
ford. In 1542 he took part in a hostile expedition into 
Scotland under his father, the Duke of Norfolk, and was 
present at the siege of Kelso. In the subsequent wars with 
France he distinguished himself as a soldier ; but was over- 
powered by numbers at St. Etienne in 1546, and shortly 
afterwards recalled and apprehended on a charge of treason. 
The proof of the charge was mainly founded on his quarter- 
ing the royai arms of Edward the Confessor among his 
armorial bearings. It was in vain to show that both his fa- 
ther and grandfather had used them before him ; Henry 
VIII. had determined upon his death, and he fell a victim 
to the brutal jealousy of that despot, cut ofE in the flower 
of his young manhood, and leaving behind a name for 
learning, chivalrous feeling, and courtly accomplishments 
scarcely, if at all, inferior to that of Sir Philip Sidney. The 
romantic tradition, invented by Nash towards the close of 
the sixteenth century, of his passion for the unknown Lady 
Geraldine, his knight-errantry in Italy in celebration of her 
virtues, and his strange adventures there, with the story of 
the magical mirror, have been woven by Scott, in the song 
of Fitztraver, into The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

The verses of Surrey remained unpublished till ten years 
after his death, when (1557) they appeared in the first col- 
lection of popular English poetry, known as TotteVs Miscel- 
lany, but more properly called Songs and Sonnets by differ- 
ent authors. He wrote under the influence of the Italian 
school of Petrarch, and his great service to English verse 
lies in his introduction of artistic forms which checked the 
tendency to doggerel — the inevitable destiny of such helter- 
skelter rhyming as Skelton had popularized. With Wyatt, 
to whom he stood in the relation of a disciple, he brought 
in the sonnet form; but he has a far better ear than his 
master, and indeed the fluency of Surrey's lines, and the 
purity of his expression, are a surprise to the modern read- 
er. One notable thing remains to be said to the credit of 
Surrey : he was the originator of blank-verse, first used in 



HENRY HOWARD, EARL OF SURREY (53 

English poetry in his translation of two books of the ^neid 
— the second and the fourth. It must be added that many 
passages of his translation show his indebtedness to the 
Scottish version of Gavin Douglas. 

o 

"Windsor ! wiiere I, in lust and 303^ 
With a king's son my childish years did pass, 
In greater feast than Priam's son of Troy : 

"Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour! 

The large green courts where we were wont to liove,^ ^ loiter 
With eyes cast up into the Maiden Tower, 
And easy sighs such as folk draw in love. ... 

"The secret groves which oft we made resound 
Of pleasant plaint, and of our ladies' praise, 
Recording oft what grace each one had found, 
What hope of speed, what dread of long delays : 

"The wild forest, the clothed holts ^ with green, "^groves 

With reins availed^ and swift y breathed horse; Het fall 
With cry of hounds and merry blasts between. 
Where we did chase the fearful hart of force. 

"The wide vales, eke, that harboured us each night, 
Wherewith, alas, reviveth in my breast 
The sweet accord such sleeps as yet delight, 
The pleasant dreams, the quiet bed of rest , 

"The secret thoughts imparted with such trust, 
The w^anton talk, the divers change of play. 
The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just; 
Wherewith we passed the winter night away." 

—Prisoner in Windsor. 

" I saw the little boy. 

In thought how oft that he 
Did wish of God, to scape the rod, 
A tall young man to be. 

"The young man eke that feels 
His bones with pains opprest, 
How he would be a rich old man, 
To live and lie at rest. 



64 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

"The rich old man that sees 
His end draw on so sore, 
How he would be a boy again, 
To live so much the more. 

"Wherat full oft I smiled, 
To see how all these three, 
From boy to man, from man to boy, 
Would chop and change degree ; 

"And musing thus, I think 
The case is very strange, 
That man from wealth, to live in wo, 
Doth ever seek to change." 

— No Age Content with His oion Estate. 



OTHER POETS 

It is known from Dunbar's Lament for the MaTcars that Henryson 
was dead before 1508, and from a different authority that he was 
principal school-master, and probably a clergyman, a graduate, 
and a notary, in the " old grey town " of Dunfermline. His poe- 
try shows the influence of Chaucer; his Testament of Cresseid, in- 
deed, is intended as a sequel to the English master's romance of 
Troylus and Creseyde. He wrote, with too little brevity, metrical 
versions of thirteen of ^sop's Moral Fables, and an allegorical 
poem, The Bluidy SerTc. His Robin and Makyn is a very pleasant 
pastoral, the first of this kind of poetry in our literature, and may 
take rank with his version of ^sop's fable of The Uplandis Mouse 
and the Surges Mouse as the best specimen of his art. He reveals 
a graceful fancy, a playful humor, and a delicate power of obser- 
vation, minutely clear and faithful to the life. 

"One time when she was full and unfute-sair,^ ^tm footsore 
She took in mind her sister uponland. 
And longit for to hear of her weilfare — 
To see what life she had under the wand : 
Barefoot alone, with pikestaff in her hand, 
As poor pilgrim she passit out of town. 
To seek her sister both o'er dale and down. 

"Forth many wilsome- wayis can she walk, ^ wild 

Through moss and moor, through bankis, busk and breir, 
She ran cryand, till she came to a balk,^ ^ ridge 



OTHER POETS 65 

'Cum forth to me, my awin sister dear, 

Cry "Peip" anis.' With that the Mouse could hear, 

And knew her voice, as kiunisman will do. 

By verray kind, and forth she came her to." 

— The UplancUs Mouse and the Barges Mouse. 

Gavin Douglas (1475-1522), a younger son of Archibald, Earl of 
Angus, familiarly known in Scottish history as Bell-the-Cat, and 
of whom Scott, in Marmion, makes his grim father say, 

"Thanks to St. Botham, son of mine 
Save Gawain ne'er could pen a line !" 

was educated for the Church, and filled successively the posts of 
Rector of Hawick, Provost of St. Giles's Cathedral, and Bishop of 
Dunkeld. It was before he became a bishop that he produced the 
work on which his fame as a writer and scholar rests. This work 
consists of original allegorical stories and translations from the 
classics. His version of part of Ovid has long been lost, but his 
u3]]aeid (1513) is a monument of Industry and scholarship, and dis- 
plays no inconsiderable amount of literary skill. It is the first 
British translation of a Latin classic, and was the work of little 
more than a year. Its chief interest now lies in the metrical pref- 
aces or prologues with which some of the books are introduced; 
these prefaces are partly descriptive of Scottish scenery as mod- 
ified by weather and the season, and show in Douglas a keener 
color-sense and scarcely less picturesque a phraseology than one 
finds in Thomson. To the English and Scottish philologist Doug- 
las's version of the JEaeid is of extreme value, for his language 
is copious, and the Latin original is a guide to the meaning of 
archaic word and idiom, Douglas's original works consist of The 
Palace of Honour, written in the first year of the century, and King 
Heart, probably of a later date — both of them bearing considera- 
ble resemblance to the great allegories of Bunyan, the former to 
The PilgrinCs Progress, the latter to TJie Holy War. But it is im- 
possible that Bunyan could ever have heard of them. 

"Bank, bray, and boddum blanschit wox and bare, 
For gourl weddir^ growit beistis hare, ^stormy iceather 
The wynd maid waif the rede wede on the dyk, 
Bedowin^ in donkis depe was euery sike:^ ^ muddy ^ ditch 
Ouer craggis and the frontis of rochys sere 
Hang grete yse-shokkillis lang as ony spere : 
The grund stude barrane, widderit, dosk and gray, 
Herbis, flouris and gerssis wallowit* away: '^ grass shrunk 



66 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

Woddis, forestis with naket bewis blout ' ^ lave 

Stude stripit of thare wede in euery hout •,^ ^holt 

Sa bustouslie Boreas his bugill blew, 

The dere full derne^ doun in the dalis drew : ^Jiidden 

Small birdis flockand throw thik ronnys^ thrang, * shrubs 
In chirmynge and with cheping changit thare sang, 
Sekand hidlis and hirnys ^ thame to hyde ^ dejis and holes 
Fra ferefuU thuddis of the tempestuus tyde : 
The water-lynnys rowtis, and euery lynd 
Quhislit and brayit of the souchand wynd : 
Pure lauboraris and byssy husband-men 
Went weet and wery, draglit in the fen." 

— Prologue to the Seventh Book of the ^neid. 

A vigorous and voluble writer of verse rather than a poet, 
David Lindsay (1490-1557), a cadet of the family of Lord Lindsay 
of the Byres, was born at The Mount, near Cupar in Fife, edu- 
cated at St, Andrews, and shortly thereafter employed in the royal 
household at Holyrood, apparently as tutor or guardian to the 
young King James V. Scott committed an anachronism in de- 
scribing Lindsay in Marmion as of mature age in 1513, and bearing 
the dignity of knighthood and the office and garb of Lyon King- 
at-arms. Lindsay was then only about twenty-two, and his title 
and herald's rank came twelve or more years later. His life was 
a busy one, partly spent at court, partly on foreign embassies, and 
partly in the retirement of one or other of his country-seats, or in 
attendance upon his representative duties in the Scottish Parlia- 
ment, He sympathized with the Reformers, whose work he aided 
and hastened by satirical exposures of the ignorance, hypocrisy, 
indolence, and licentiousness of the Romish clergy. Robust, often 
coarse, humor, a large share of vigorous common - sense, and a 
strong power and constant habit of speaking his mind without 
needing or caring to pick his words, are the chief characteristics 
of Lindsay's verse. He wrote a Dream, involving a vision of the 
heavenly and the earthly paradise ; several ComjJlaints to the King; 
The Monarchie, involving a history of the world ; the History of 
Squire Meldrum ; and a satire of The Three Estates. The last is 
the most remarkable of his productions. It is a morality with 
farcical immoralities interspersed, and has for its object an expos- 
ure of the corrupt state of king, lords, and clergy. It is the ear- 
liest specimen extant of Scottish dramatic art, and seems to have 
been popular in its day as an acting open-air drama. Its value 
now is historical : it offers what seems to have been a true picture 
of the vicious lives of both clergy and laity in the earlier half of 
the sixteenth century. It shows the need and the warrant for a 
Reformation. 



OTHER POETS 67 

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), bora in AUington Caslle in Kent, 
was educated at Cambridge, became a favorite of Henry VIII., 
and was employed by him in diplomatic missions abroad. With 
Surrey he instituted a new departure in English poetry. Breaking 
away from imitation of Chaucer on the one hand, and refusing to 
adopt the formless jumble of Skeltonic verse on the other, he 
sought his models in Italy, and composed sonnets and stanzas, but 
with nothing like the smoothness of Surrey. He wrote satires 
and amatory verses. His poems were first published in TotteVs 
Miscellany (1557). 

George Gascoigne (1536-1577) was the son of an Essex knight, 
who disinherited him for his prodigality. He was educated at 
Cambridge, studied law at Gray's Inn, and was twice elected to 
Parliament. He saw service as a soldier in the Low Countries, 
where he fought with some distinction against the Spaniards. 
Settling at last in England, he busied himself with literature, and 
was present at Kenilworth when Elizabeth paid her famous visit 
to that magnificent castle ; he is said to have designed part of the 
scenic and poetical entertainment on that occasion. He is mem- 
orable as the author of The Steel Glass, the first of our regular 
satires, written in blank -verse; a comedy from the Italian of 
Ariosto, called The Supposes, and a tragedy from the Greek of 
Euripides, called The Jocasta — both acted in 1566 ; also a morali- 
ty. The Glass of Government; and, in addition to several short 
miscellaneous pieces, a poem bearing the fantastic title of Flowers, 
Herbs, and Weeds. He is a lively writer, little inferior to Sackville. 

"Sing lullaby, as women do. 

Wherewith they bring their babes to rest, 
And lullaby can I sing too. 

As womanly as can the best. 
With lullaby they still the child ; 
And if I be not much beguiled, 
Full many wanton babes have I 
Which must be stilled with lullaby. 

"First lullaby, my youthful years, 
It is now time to go to bed, 
For crooked age and hoary hairs 

Have won the hav'n within my head : 
With lullaby, then, youth, be still, 
With lullaby content thy will, 
Since courage quails and comes behind, 
Go sleep and so beguile thy mind." 

— Lullaby of a Lover. 



68 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), born of an ancient family at Buck- 
liurst in Sussex, was educated at both Oxford and Cambridge, and 
entered the Middle Temple ; but turning away from the practice 
of law, he devoted his early manliood to literature, and soon ac- 
quired distinction as a writer. His connection with literature is 
manifest to us in The Mirror for Magistrates — a poetical work 
which he had planned as a warning to rulers, and to which vari- 
ous writers contributed, himself among the number. It consists 
of the tragical life-stories of illustrious Englishmen, told by them- 
selves, and is thus a kind of later Falls of Princes. Sackville's 
contributions are the opening Luluction and The Complaint of 
Buckingham. He employs the seven-lined stanza of Chaucer, and 
writes with a fulness, fluency, and stateliness which prepare us for 
the new poetry of Spenser. The Induction especially reveals a 
powerful imagination (roused doubtless by contact with Dante), 
capable of sublime resvilts ; the personifications are lifelike, and 
the natural descriptions both fresh and true, Sackville has the 
great honor of having written (with some help from Thomas Nor- 
ton) the first English tragedy, Gorhoduc, acted in 1561, published 
under the title of Ferrex and Porrex ten years later. The dialogue 
is in blank-verse — not always very smooth ; there are choruses, as 
in the Greek tragedy ; and there are long rhetorical speeches, and 
a great want of that prime essential of a drama — action. The 
story is taken from ancient British history. It was not on the 
lines of Gorhoduc that English tragedy developed under Marlowe 
and Shakespeare. Yet there were persistent attempts to force 
English tragedy upon those lines both before and after Shakespeare. 

Sackville became Lord Buckhurfet in his thirty-first year, and 
was created Earl of Dorset early in the reign of James I. His 
connection with literature may be said to have ended before he re- 
ceived the first of those titles. He now turned to politics, and as 
a statesman rose to fill the highest post in the government of the 
country ; in succession to Burleigh he became Lord High Treas- 
urer, an office equivalent to the modern Premier. He died sud- 
denly at the council-table in 1608. That was the year of Mil- 
ton's birth. 

"Thence come we to the horror and the hell, 

The large great kingdoms, and the dreadful reign 
Of Pluto in his throne where he did dwell. 
The wide waste places, and the hugy plain. 
The wailings, shrieks, and sundry sorts of pain. 
The sighs, the sobs, the deep and deadly groan ; 
Earth, air, and all resounding plaint and moan." 

— The Mirror for Magistrates. 



SIR THOMAS MORE 69 



PROSE WRITERS 

The first eminent prose writer of the Renaissance in Ei'ig- 
land was Sir Thomas More (1480-1535). He was the son 
of a judge of the King's Bench, educated at Oxford, and, 
entering the legal profession, speedily rose to positions of 
great trust and influence. His political career belongs to 
history. In 1529 he was Lord Chancellor. His devotion 
to the papal form of church government was the occasion 
of his execution ; he was accused of traitorously denying to 
Henry VIII. the title of Supreme Head of the Church in 
England. More was not only himself a great scholar and a 
shrewd and profound thinker, but the friend of scholars 
and thinkers, and a patron of learning. He was intimate 
with Colet, and Erasmus was his guest at his house at Chel- 
sea. He was a man of easy and genial manners, of en- 
lightened views, humane and kind-hearted, witty, even jocu- 
lar, fond of music, and a great favorite with his children. 
In his intercourse with them he threw to the winds the 
reserve which was then in universal practice among parents 
towards their children. " He loved teaching them, and 
lured them to their deeper studies by the coins and curios- 
ities he had gathered in his cabinet. He was as fond of 
their pets and their games as his children themselves, and 
would take grave scholars and statesmen into the garden to 
see his girls' rabbit - hutches, or to watch the gambols of 
their favourite monkey." He is memorable in literary his- 
tory for two works — a History of Edward V. and Richard 
III., written (in 1513) in a pure and clear style — the first, 
indeed, of our modern histories ; and Utopia, a social and 
political tale of a perfectly governed and happy people in- 
habiting the land of Nowhere. 

Utopia was written in Latin in 1516, and not rendered 
into English till a generation later. The book shows More's 
sense of the need for a reformation of the laws and usages 
of Christian society. It advocates, with a sagacity and 
breadth of view that would do honor to a nineteenth-century 



70 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

statesman, changes and institutions in political and social 
life which we have only recently adopted, or are yet in hope 
of adopting. It discusses property and the labor question, 
education and the public health, the criminal laws, temper- 
ance and recreation, religion and conscience, and it proposes 
solutions for the problems which those subjects involve when 
viewed in connection with the State and legislation. The 
tale of Utopia is put into the mouth of a seaman, and is pref- 
aced with an account of the circumstances in which More 
is supposed to have heard it. It was while he was on a dip- 
lomatic mission to the Low Countries that he fell under the 
fascinating spell of this more Ancient Mariner, who had been 
the fellow-voyager of Amerigo Vespucci, and who, " upon a 
bench covered with green turves in my garden," told the 
marvellous adventures of his desertion by Vespucci, his 
wanderings over the New World below the equator, and his 
discovery of Utopia and its satisfied people. In the follow- 
ing approved style of the skilful story-teller the reader is 
placed in a position to listen to the narrative: "On a certain 
day, when I had heard mass in Our Lady's Church, which is 
the fairest, the most gorgeous and curious church of building 
in all the city of Antwerp, and also most frequented of peo- 
ple, and service being over I was ready to go home to my 
lodgings, I chanced to espy my friend Peter Gilles talking 
with a certain stranger, a man well stricken in age, with a 
black, sunburnt face,. a large beard, and a cloke cast trimly 
about his shoulders, whom by his favour and apparell forth- 
with I judged to be a mariner." 

It ought also to be mentioned that, in a manner strangely 
at variance with the spirit of religious toleration pleaded for 
in Utopia, More launched several polemics against Tyndale 
and " the pestilent sect of Luther." 

If More was the first man of genius in England to attempt 
the production of an English style in prose, Roger Ascham 
(1515-1586), though not more than a scholar and a man of 
talent, was probably the next; and he deserves especial credit 
in undertaking the work, from the purity of his motive and the 



SIR THOMAS MORE 71 

difficulty of the task. He hated euphuism and Italian fash- 
ions in English speech as "an enchantment of Circe," and he 
found it "more easier" to write in Latin and Greek, and 
" more fit for his trade," than to compose in the English 
tongue. Yet he wrote " his English matter in the English 
tongue for Englishmen." His "English matter" was a prac- 
tical treatise in form of a dialogue upon archery, called Tox- 
oj^hilus, and an educational treatise entitled the Schoolmaster. 
Twenty-three years lay between those books, the former hav- 
ing been published in 1544, and the latter written in the 
year of his death. He wrote a pure, if rather stiff and for- 
mal, English style, and was at least free from lumbering pa- 
rentheses and classical pedantries. Both books were of edu- 
cational value — for archery was recommended as a healthy 
diversion for the studious. Ascham's scheme of education 
went on the principle of a sound body for the sound mind, 
and no more sensible remark has ever been uttered on the 
training of youth than the following statement of his: "As 
little study getteth little learning or none at all, so the most 
study getteth not the most learning of all ; for a man's wit, 
preoccupied in earnest study, must as well be recreated with 
some honest pastime (as the body, fore-laboured, must be re- 
freshed with sleep and quietness, or else it cannot endure 
very long)." Ascham's prose is still pleasant and instructive 
reading. The story of his life is, in the main, that of a quiet 
scholar and teacher. Born in Yorkshire, he went at the 
age of fifteen to Cambridge, then, under the impulse of the 
New Learning, more famous for Greek than Oxford. There 
he became in succession scholar, fellow, lecturer, and pub- 
lic orator. He was employed in diplomatic business in the 
reign of Edward VL ; he acted as tutor to the Princess 
Elizabeth, and filled the office of secretary to both Mary and 
Elizabeth in succession. He enjoyed several pensions and 
the personal favor of four sovereigns. It was to Henry 
VIII., whose patronage of learning should never be over- 
looked, that Ascham dedicated his first work, and it was from 
him he received his first pension. He was never molested 
for his religion, yet he was and remained a stanch Protestant. 



72 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 



OTHER PROSE WRITERS 

Sir Thomas Mallory is worthy of remembrance for his epic 
prose romance Morte d' Arthur, a compilation of legends of the 
ancient British Prince Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, 
which has proved a veritable storehouse of the materials of art 
down to the Idylls of the King. The work and the traditions it 
preserves have had a strange fascination for many of the lead- 
ing poets of our literary history— such as Spenser, Skakespeare, 
Milton, Dryden, Wordsworth, Scott, and Tennyson. The Morte 
d' Arthur was finished in 1470, m the reign of Edward IV., but 
not published till 1485. 

It was printed by William Caxton (1412 ?-l 492?), the first Eng- 
lish printer. He was originally from Kent, and was a mercer by 
trade before he became interested in the publication of books. 
Before he became a printer he was a copyist of MSS. in the service 
of the Duchess of Burgundy, and he was nearly sixty before he 
saw and acquired the art of printing from movable types. In 1474 
he came home to England after an absence of thirty-five years of 
his manhood, bringing with him a printing-press and specimens of 
its work. He planted his press in the Almonry at Westminster, 
and set at once to work to supply at a cheap rate books of instruc- 
tion and entertainment for the people. Divines, nobles, and gentle 
folks lent him books to copy; he himself translated and compiled, 
and there was scarcely an old English book of popular interest, or 
indeed of any value, that he did not reproduce. The Game and 
Play of Chess was the first book printed in England. He printed 
Chaucer's poetry and Mai lory's Tales, for both of which, and for 
all romantic stories and poetry whatever, he had a great liking ; 
and by doing so he kept alive and quickened the public interest in 
poetry, and furnished later and contemporary poets with English 
models and national sources of inspiration. His one great aim 
was to be understood of ordinary folks, and for that purpose he 
employed in his own translations and compilations (some sixty 
in all) the common current speech. He shares, therefore, in the 
honor of giving fixity to the English language. The type he used 
was black-letter ; and of his numerous translations the epic fable 
of Reynard the Fox, taken from a Dutch version, may be singled 
out as a popular specimen. 

William Tyndale (1484?-1536), a native of Gloucestershire, ed- 
ucated at Oxford, was a clergyman of distinguished learning 
and piet}--, who, adopting the Reformed doctrines, was forced to 
flee to the Continent to escape persecution. He visited Luther, 
and, settling at Antwerp, translated the New Testament into ver- 



OTHER PROSE WRITERS 73 

nacular English. This was in 1525. It was speedily circulated 
far and wide in England, in spite of every effort by Henry VIII., 
Wolsey, and Sir Thomas More to suppress it, no one offering a 
bitterer opposition than More. Tyndale next began a translation 
of the Old Testament, completing and publishing in 1530 the first 
five books. Miles Coverdale, who helped him with the Penta- 
teuch, completed on the lines laid dov;n by Tyndale the translation 
of the Old Testament, and was the first to publish the whole Bible, 
in 1535. Re-edited, it appeared in 1539 as Ciomwell's Bible, and 
again in 1540 as Cranmer's. It was this Bible, which was placed 
in every parish church in England, which found its way into Scot- 
land and Protestant Ireland, and which, revised in the reign of 
James I., and published in 1611 as the Authorized Version, passed 
with the Pilgrim Fathers into New England, that more than any 
other book fixed the standard of our English speech once for all. 
"England," says Green, "became the people of a book, and that 
book was the Bible." The purity of Tyndale's English is remark- 
able; it has been calculated that the Authorized Version, which 
follows Tyndale's translation very closely, consists of about 6000 
separate words, and of these only about 250 are not now in current 
use. No better proof could be given of "the influence his transla- 
tion of the Bible has had in preserving the old speech of England." 
Henr}'- VIII. is responsible for the martyrdom of Tyndale ; by his 
Influence a warrarit was got in Brussels by which Tyndale was 
seized at Antwerp, and there strangled and burned in 1536, praying 
at the moment of his death that God would "open the King of 
England's eyes." 

Hugh Latimer (1470-1555), a native of Leicestershire and edu- 
cated at Cambridge and Padua, was at first a Catholic clergyman, 
but was converted to Protestantism, and by his frank, familiar, 
and racy style of speech became the most popular preacher of his 
day, and a great power in the Reformation movement. He got 
into the good graces of Henry VIII. by pronouncing in favor of 
the divorce of Queen Katharine ; and though he differed from 
the king on many religious points, bluflly remonstrating with him 
for his opposition to the English Bible, he still retained Henry's 
favor, and was promoted to the see of Worcester in 1535. But 
later in the reign he was thrown into the Tower. Liberated un- 
der Edward VI., he was re-offered his bishopric, but chose rather 
the practical work of a preacher, and went about rousing in quiet 
households throughout the land that zeal for a religious life which 
marks the English Reformation. He suffered death at the stake 
at Oxford in the reign of Mary, bravely encouraging himself and 
his fellow-martyr to endure the last agonies in the memorable 
words : " Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man ; 



74 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, 
as I trust shall never be put out." He wrote many sermons, most 
of them printed after his death ; they exhibit the homeliness, the 
humor, and the sturdy common-sense and courage which we asso- 
ciate with Luther. His sermon on The Ploughers and his Seven 
Sermons on the LorcVs Prayer were long popular. His autobio- 
graphical revelations are not the least interesting part of his ser- 
mons. " My father," he writes, "was a yeoman, and had no lands 
of his own, only he had a farm of £3 or £4 a-year at the utter- 
most, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. 
He had walk for an hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty 
kine. ... He kept me to scliool, or else 1 had not been able to 
have preaclied before the king's majesty now. He married my 
sisters with £5 or 20 nobles apiece, so that he brought them up in 
godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neigh- 
bours. Aud some alms he gave to the poor, and all this he did of 
the said farm." 

The Scottish prose of this period is greatly inferior to the Eng- 
lish. The life of John Knox (1505-1572) was one of public activity 
rather than of literary thought. It belongs to Scottish ecclesiasti- 
cal politics. He was born at Gifford, an East Lothian village at the 
foot of Lammermoor, and was educated at Glasgow, and ordained 
a priest of the Catholic faith. At the age of thirty-seven he an- 
nounced himself a Protestant. In 1547 he wa's seized at St. An- 
drews, and condemned to the French galleys for two years. He 
then preached in England ; but on the outbreak of persecution 
under Mary he retired to Geneva, where he published in 1558 his 
First Blast against the Monstrous Regimen{t) of Women— vQ.e^mng 
Mary Tudor and Mary of Guise. He returned finally to Scotland 
in 1559, and took an active and leading part in the settlement of 
that country on a Protestant basis. It was truly said of him that 
"he never feared the face of man." He v^rote a rather rambling, 
but in the main trustworthy, History of the Scottish Reformation — 
published twelve years after his death. 

John Foxe (1517-1587), a native of Boston, and a student of Ox- 
ford, was successively a family tutor, a starving outcast in Lon- 
don, a'' Protestant fugitive at Antwerp, a corrector for the press at 
Basle, and a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral. He wrote " The 
Book of Martyrs," which bears the title of Acts and Monuments of 
these Latter Perilous Days, at first in Latin, afterwards (1563) in 
English. His history is veracious, but not always true ; it was 
immensely popular, and a great favorite with Bunyan. 

Ralph or Raphael Holinshed, who died in 1580, is memorable for 
his Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (pnhlished in 1577). 
He was the principal author of those Chronicles, but was assisted 



JOHN HEYWOOD 75 

by John Stow and several others, and incorporated into his book 
the Scottish history of Hector Boece, and the Irish history of 
Giraldus Cambrensis. It was from Holinshed's version of Boece's 
history that Shakespeare got the materials for his magnificent 
tragedy of Macbeth. 

DKAMATIC WRITERS 

The first faint dawnings of the English drama, which was 
destined in the next period to" rise so suddenly and so 
gloriously, are visible in this period in the Interludes of 
John Heywood (1506 ?-1565). These are a species of 
comic farcical entertainments, in which the personages rep- 
resent contemporary characters in real life ; but the special 
service which Heywood rendered to the future comic drama 
lay in his separation of those farcical interludes from the 
moralities, and his presentation of them as independent 
dramatic pieces. Out of his Interludes grew English come- 
dy. Heywood was a pious Roman Catholic who endured 
persecution in the reigns of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. It 
was mostly in his early manhood that he produced, for the 
amusement of the court of Henry VIIL, the popular In- 
terludes which make his name memorable in our literary 
annals. His Memj Play between the Husband, the Wife, 
and the Priest was acted in 1532. It is not known when 
his Merry Interlude of the Four P\s was written, but it 
seems to have been very popular. It presents four charac- 
ters, a Palmer, a Pardoner, a 'Potecary, and a Pedler, who 
dispute who shall tell the biggest lie ; the victory goes to 
the Palmer, who surprises the others into the exclamation 
that they never heard a greater falsehood in their lives 
when he slips out the remark that he never yet knew a 
woman lose her patience. 

But the writer of the first regular English comedy, Ralph 
Roister Boister, was Nicholas Udall (1506-1564), a flogging 
school-master of St. Paul's and Eton. It is in five acts, 
subdivided into scenes, and is a representation of the middle- 
class London life of its day. It is written in rhyme, in a 
peculiar limping measure of four accents, without any re- 



76 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

gard to the number of syllables,, and is varied with songs. 
If the mirth of the piece be a little dull, there is at least 
little coarseness. It is the story of the wooing of a certain 
Widow Constance by her twa suitors,. Ralph Roister Bolster 
and Gawin Goodluck ; the former is a conceited fool, the 
dupe of Matthew Merry Greek ; the latter is the accepted 
lover. The fun reaches its climax when the widow, with 
the assistance of her maids, uses actual violence to get rid 
of Ralph and his followers ; but all ends happily at last. 
The play was first printed in 1566, but was written not 
later than 1551. 

Thomas Sackville's important contribution to English 
drama — the tragedy of Gorhoduc, or Ferrex and Porrex — 
written in conjunction with Thomas Norton, a London bar- 
rister, and first acted in 1561, has already been noticed 
(p. 68). 

John Still (1543 ?-l 608) continued in Gammer Gurion's 
Needle the comic drama which Udall had begun, but in- 
fused into it a strong element of farce, and disfigured his 
dialogue with much foul language. The measure is much 
the same as that of Ralph Roister Bolster, but the lines flow 
more steadily, and there is more action in the piece. The 
plot is simple enough : Gammer Gurton, while repairing 
her man Hodge's attire, loses her needle, and, in the course 
of her efforts to find it, is drawn into a quarrel with her 
neighbors by the mischievous Diccon ; she discovers it at 
last where she had been using it — in the breeches she had 
been mending. The best thing in the play is the song of 
Back and side go bare, written with genuine bacchanalian 
abandon. Still, who afterwards became Bishop of Bath and 
Wells, seems to have been ashamed of his youthful sallies, 
lyrical and dramatic (they belong to 1565), and, without 
actually disowning them, left them unacknowledged. 

Another play -writing bishop, John Bale (1495-1563), may 
be mentioned here for his drama of King John — the first of 



LIST OF AUTHORS AND WORKS, 1400-1580 77 

our liistorical plays, but spoiled by the intermixture of alle- 
gorical personages. 

Skelton's connection with the primitive drama has al- 
ready been pointed out (p. 55). 



I. A Chronological Table op Authors from 1400 to 1580 

1372 ?-1454. Thomas Occleve, poet. 
1375-1446 ? John Lydgate, poet. 
— 1420 — . Andrew Wyntoun, (Scottish) metrical chronicler. 
1394-1437. James I. , King of Scotland, poet. 
1395-1485. Sir John Fortescue, legal and political writer. 
— 1460 — . Blind Harry, the Scottish minstrel, author of a rude 

epic of Wallace (much admired by Burns). 
— 1470 — . Sir Thomas Mallor}^ legendary compiler. 
1412 ?-1492. William Caxton the printer, miscellaneous writer. 
1440 ?-1508 ? Robert Henryson, (Scottish) poet. 
1450 ?-1512 ? Robert Fabian, chronicler. 
1459-1535. John Fisher, Bishop, theological writer. 
1460-1529. John Skelton, poet. 
1460 ?-1513. William Dunbar, (Scottish) poet. 
1465-1536. Hector Boece (Boethius), (Scottish) historian (in 

Latin). 
1467-1533. John Bourchier, Lord Berners, translator and poet. 
1470-1555. Hugh Latimer, Bishop, theological writer. 
1475-1522. Gavin Douglas, Bishop, (Scottish) poet. 
1480-1535. Sir Thomas More, political and historical writer. 
1483 ?-1512 ? Stephen Hawes, poet. 
1484 ?-1536. William Tyndale, translator of Scripture. 
1485-1565. Miles Coverdale, translator of Scripture. 
1488-1551. Alexander Barclay, poet. 

1490-1557. Sir David Lindsay, (Scottish) dramatic and satirical 
writer of verse. 
?-1555. Nicholas Ridley, Bishop, ecclesiastical writer. 
—1528—. William Roy, satirist. 

1495-1563. John Bale, Bishop, historian and dramatist. 
1496-1586. Sir Richard Maitland, (Scottish) poet and historian. 
1503-1542. Sir Thomas Wyatt, poet. 

1504-1575. Matthew Parker, Archbishop, ecclesiastical writer. 
1505-1572. John Knox, (Scottish) ecclesiastical writer, etc. 
1506?-1565. John Hey wood, writer of interludes. 
1506-1552. John Leland, antiquarian writer. 



78 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

1506-1582. George Buchanan, (Scottish) poet, historian, etc. (in 

Latin). 
— 1536 — . John Bellenden, (Scottish) historian. 

1506-1564. Nicliohis Udall, dramatist. 
1515?-1568. Roger Ascham, educational writer. 

1516-1547. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, poet. 
1516 ?-1580. Thomas Tusser, poet. 

1517-1587. John Foxe, annalist of the Martyrs. 

1519-1563. Nicholas Grimoald, poet. 

?-1580. Rapliael Holinshed, chronicler. 

1519-1583. Edmund Grindal, Archbishop, theologian, etc. 

1522-1571. John Jewell, Bishop, theologian. 

1527-1605. John Stow, chronicler. 

1536-1577. George Gascoigne, poet. 

1536-1608. Thomas Sackville, Lord Bucklmrst, dramatic poet. 

1543-1608. John Still, Bishop, dramatist and poet. 

Famous scholars of the period, not known as authors, were : 
William Grocyn (1442-1519), John Colet (1466-1519), Thomas Lin- 
acre (died 1524), Sir John Cheke (1514-1557), and James CrichLou 
(Scottish), styled "The Admirable" (1560-1583). 



II. A Chronological List of Works produced between 
1400 AND 1580 

1400-1420. Lydgate's Troy Book; and Wyntoun's Cronykil 

(Chronicle) of Scotland. 
1422-1505. The Paston Letters (correspondence of a country 
family). 
1423. The King's Quair. 
1425. Lydgate's Falls of Princes. 

1450. Blind Harry's Wallace ; Fortescue's Absolute and 
Limited Monarchy. Also, about this time, such 
anonymous ballads as Chevy Chase, etc. 

1470. Mallory's Morte d' Arthur finished. 

1471. Caxton prints his translation of The History of Troy 

at Cologne. 

1474. The Game of Chess, printed by Caxton (the first 

book ever printed in England). 

1475. Henryson's Robin and Makyne. Also, about this 

time, such anonymous ballads as The Nut-Brown 

Maid, etc. 
1485. Morte d'Arthur printed. 
1500. Skelton's Bowge {rewards) of Court, not later than 

this. 



LIST OF WORKS, 1400-1580 79 

1501. Gavin Douglas's Palace of Honour. 
1503. Dunbar's The Thistle and the Rose. 

1506. Barclay's The Castle of Labour. 

1507. Skelton's Book of Philip Sparrow. 

1508. Dunbar's The Golden Targe ; Barclay's The Ship of 

Fools. 
1513. Gavin Douglas's Scottish translation of The iEneid ; 
More's History of Edward V. (tirst printed 1557). 

1516. More's Utopia (in Latin) — translated by Ralph Rob- 

inson in 1551. 

1517. Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure. 

1523. Froissart translated by Lord Berners. 
1535. Tyndale's translation of New Testament. 
1528. The Dream, of Sir David Lindsay. 
1532. Heyvvood's Plays. 

1535. Coverdale's Bible ; Lindsay's satire of The Three 

Estates first acted (printed five years later). 

1536. Tyndale's New Testament printed in England ; 

Udall's Ralph Roister Doister written about this 
time. 

1537. Coverdale's Bible printed in England. 

1539. Coverdale's (" Cromwell's") Bible. 

1540. Cranmer's (The Great) Bible. 

1544. Ascham's Toxophilus ; Bale's Death of Sir John Old- 
castle. 
1549. Sternhold and Hopkins's Psalms in English metre. 
1549-1552. The English Prayer Book, edited by Cranmer. 

1552. Latimer's Sermons on the Lord's Prayer, etc. [? Ed- 

mund Spenser born.] 

1553. Earl of Surrey's translation of The ^neid (Books 

II. and IV.) : Lindsay's Monarchic. 
1557. Tusser's Hundred Points of Good Husbandry ; Tot- 
tel's Miscellany of Uncertain Authors (poems by 
Surrey, Wyatt,Grimoald, Lord Berners, and others). 

1561. Gorboduc (Ferrex and Porrex) acted ; authors, Sack- 

ville and Morton. Stowe's English Chronicle. 
[Francis Bacon born.] 

1562. Thomas Phaer's Virgil, Books I.-IX. 

1563. Mirror for Magistrates, 2d edition (the 1st in 1559), 

with Sackville's Induction ; Foxe's Acts and Mon- 
uments (Book of Martyrs). 
[1564. William Shakespeare born.] 

1565. Golding's translation of Ovid (Metam., Books I. -IV.); 
Gorboduc, first printed tragedy ; also, not later, 
John Still's Gammer Gurton's Needle written. 



80 THE THIRD PERIOD, 1400-1580 

1566. Ralph Roister Doister, first printed comedy ; The 
Palace of Pleasure (Tales from the Italian), by 
William Painter. 

1568. Parker's (The Bishops') Bible. 

1570. Ascham's The Schoolmaster. 

1574. Parker's Lives of the Seventy Archbishops of Can- 

terbury. 

1575. Goldiug's Ovid's Metamorphoses (completed). 

1576. Gascoigne's Steel Glass. Also, Paradise of Dainty 

Devices — a very popular poetical collection often 
reprinted. 

1577. Holinshed's Chronicles (first edition). 

1578. Frobisher's Voyage, by Churchyard. 

1579. Lyly's Euphues ; North's translation of Plutarch ; 

Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar. 
1580-1581. The Arcadia, and The Apology for Poetry (Defence 
of Poesy), written by Sir Philip Sidney. 



1580-1660 

FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE KEIGN OF ELIZABETH TO THE 
BESTORATION 

The range is over eighty years, and extends from the mid- 
dle of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, 
to the accession of a Scottish dynasty, and onward through 
the brief interval of the time of the Commonwealth to the 
recall of monarchy and the Stuarts. The succession of rulers 
in the period is as follows : Tudor — Elizabeth ; Stuarts — 
James I., Charles I. ; for the Commonwealth — Oliver Crom- 
well, Richard Cromwell. The chief events of history, affect- 
ing more or less the literary growth of the period, are here 
presented in order under the successive rulers : 

Second half of tlie Reign of Elizabeth, 1580-1603.— Activity of the 

Jesuits ; and of the Puritans ; their repression. Plots against the 
Queen's life ; execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. The Spanish 
Armada (1588). Irish rebellions; execution of Essex. [During 
all this time James VI. was reigning in Scotland.] 

James I., 1603-1625. — Hampton Court Conference ; Episcopacy 
maintained ; translation of the Bible. Gunpowder Plot (1605) ; 
penal laws against Catholics. Marriage of Princess Elizabeth to 
Frederick, elector palatine (1613) ; outbreak of Thirty Years' War 
(1618). Execution of Raleigh (1618). No Parliament (1614-1621). 
The Spanish Match. The Pilgrim Fathers at New Plymouth 
(1620). 

Charles I., 1625-1649. — Quarrels with Parliament. French expe- 
dition to Bochelle. The Petition of Right (1628). No Parliament 
(1629-1640). Ship-money, and Hampden's opposition. Went- 
worth's "thorough" policy in Ireland. The Scottish National 
Covenant against Episcopacy (1638). The Long Parliament — 
execution of Strafford (1641); abolition of Star-chamber, etc. ; civil 
war ; rise of Cromwell ; the king's execution. 

Parliament, 1649-1653. — Conquest of Ireland ; defeat of the Scots 



82 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

at Duabar ; at Worcester — all by Cromwell. Blake's victories by 
sea over the Dutch, The Rump Parliament dissolved, 

Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, 1653-1658. — Extension of British 
power abroad ; religious freedom at home ; toleration for Protes- 
tants over all Europe. 

Ricliard Cromwell, 1658-1660, — Struggle between Parliament and 
army ; decided by Monk, Convention Parliament. Declaration 
from Breda. Restoration, 



INTRODUCTION 

The period of eighty years from 1580 to 1660 is not 
only the greatest in the history of English literature, but 
one of the four or five greatest in the literary history of 
the world. It stands unmatched by the brilliant open- 
ing of the nineteenth century at home, and even the age 
of Pericles in the literary history of ancient Greece 
does not altogether outshine it. Its greatness is re- 
vealed in the quantity and quality of its productions, in 
the number of illustrious names which adorn it, and in 
the degree of excellence attained in every department of 
literature then cultivated. It is pre-eminent alike in 
prose and in verse. To it belong in the department of 
non-dramatic poetry the great names of Spenser and 
Milton ; in dramatic poetry those of Shakespeare and 
Ben Jonson ; in philosophy Bacon and Hobbes ; in the- 
ology Hooker and Taylor ; in history Lord Clarendon. 
Even its second-class men, such as Chapman and Mar- 
lowe, Webster and Beaumont and Fletcher, and Thomas 
JBrowne, would rank in other English periods with the 
foremost. The wealth and variety of its thought and 
feeling are equalled by the wealth and variety of its ex- 
pression. A lofty ideality is its prevailing characteris- 
tic ; its prose is as imaginative as its verse. It has been 
called the Elizabethan age of literature, and with jus- 
tice, for noJ: only did it begin in the reign of Elizabeth, 



INTRODUCTION 



83 



but the impulses which then commenced to play upon 
literature continued to operate for half a century after 
her death. 

It was a combination of causes which produced the 
marvellous outburst of literary genius in the reign of 
Elizabeth. Chief among them were the invention of 
printing, the revival of learning, the reformation of re- 
ligion, the discovery of America — events of the preced- 
ing age the importance and effects of which were now 
more fully realized ; the defeat of the Spanish Armada, 
the patronage of the court, and the establishment of a 
popular government in a united state. 

Of foreign literary influences affecting the period, 
Latin was the most powerful ; next come Italian and 
ancient Greek ; Spanish influence was less felt than 
these ; French still less ; and German least of them all. 
Translations from these various languages continued to 
be made. Ovid, for example, was rendered into English 
by Golding, Churchyard, and Sandys ; Virgil by Stani- 
hurst and Ogilvy ; Seneca by Newton and Studley ; 
Tacitus by Savile. Ariosto was Englished by Harring- 
ton in 1591 ; Tasso by Carew, and later (in 1600) by 
Fairfax. Versions of Homer were given by Chapman 
(beginning 1598), and (from the French of Salel) by 
Arthur Hall ; Hesiod also was translated by Chapman. 
Spanish plays were adapted or imitated ; and the Liisiad 
of Camoens was rendered (1655) by Fanshawe. John 
Florio gave a version of Montaigne's Essays in 1603 ; 
Sylvester translated Du Bartas ; and Urquhart began 
his version of Rabelais. Translations such as these not 
only furnished English writers with models for imi- 
tation, but inspired them with ideas and suggested 
themes. Greene, for example, dramatized Orlando Furi- 
oso ; Peele took up the Tale of Troy ; Lyly wrote Gala- 



84 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

tea and Midas ; Shakespeare, besides handling the fable 
of Venus and Adonis, and the story of Ijucrece, found 
excellent subjects for drama in Goriolanus, Julius Ccesar, 
etc. Ben Jonson composed Sejanus and Catiline; and 
Marlowe, in addition to the love - story of Hero and 
LeandeVy came across a congenial theme in the German 
leerend of Doctor Faustus. 

o 

Among the great and varied mass of translated works 
which marks the period, special notice should be taken 
of the Authorized Version of the Bible, which appeared 
in 1611 ; being universally and continuously read, it had 
a powerful effect in giving steadiness and uniformity to 
the English tongue. 

It was in this period that English literature acquired 
European fame, and it is from this period that modern 
English literature dates. There is only one really great 
English name in the antecedent times, that of Chaucer. 
But the immediately preceding period, and especially 
the close of it, prepared the way for the Elizabethan 
age. The Elizabethan writers took up and developed the 
work which Surrey and Buckhurst had inaugurated, and 
extracted a new and nobler music from the sonnet and 
blank-verse. They continued the amourist poetry, and 
gave it a warmth and strength of expression hitherto 
unknown ; historical themes were more largely culti- 
vated ; and the drama was suddenly brought by Mar- 
lowe and Shakespeare to a pitch of excellence higher 
than it was ever again to reach. Epic and lyrical poe- 
try attained a correspondingly high level ; pastoralism 
was introduced ; nature was made a special subject of 
poetical observation ; and a new school of poetical alle- 
gory was founded. 

Literary prose begins now. It passed under Lyly 
and his followers through a peculiar probationary phase 



EDMUND SPENSER gg 

known as Euphuism — from which it soon happily 
emerged, to run wild in the style of Taylor and of 
Milton in unrestrained but unaffected freedom. Yet in 
the essays of Bacon and the treatises of Hobbes there is 
some anticipation of the condensed style of prose which 
came in with Dryden. Hooker, whose language is grave 
and stately, may be taken as the first writer of modern 
literary prose. In the later half of the period, contro- 
versial writings became common, and satire began its 
attacks on the Puritan party. 

CLASSIFICATION OF THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 

I. Podfe.— Spenser AND Milton. 

Of less note.— 8id:sey, Daniel, Drayton, Donne, Drum- 
MOND, Wither, Carew, William Browne, Quarles, 
Herbert, PIerrick, Suckling, Lovelace, Crashaw. 
II. Dramatic P(9e^s.— Shakespeare and Jonson. 

Others. — Chapman, Greene, Marlowe, Webster, 
Fletcher, Massinger, Beaumont, Shirley. 
III. Prose Writers.— Bkcoi^ and Taylor. 

Others. — Raleigh, Hooker, Lyly, Hobbes, Walton, 

Thomas Browne, Fuller, Hyde (Lord Clarendon). 

Note.—BQn Jonson was appointed Poet-Laureate in 1630. After 

him the next Laureate was Sir William Davenant, 1637. Samuel 

Daniel, tliougli not formally appointed, may be regarded with 

some color as filling the office before Jonson. 

POETS 

The next great English poet after Chaucer, the people's 
poet of the day, and the poets' poet also, both then and 
ever since, Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), was born in 
London, of parents poor but connected with " a house of 
ancient fame." He was educated first at Merchant Taylors', 
and afterwards at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, which he 
entered as a sizar at the age of seventeen, and where he 
remained for seven years, till his graduation as M.A. in 
1576. He was an accomplished scholar, though, like Mil- 



86 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

ton, he did not gain a fellowship. On leaving Cambridge 
he went to reside with friends for about two years in the 
north of England, where he fell in love with Rosalind, who 
did not respond to his passion, and where he wrote The 
ShepheriTs Calendar, a set of twelve eclogues, one for each 
month of the year. He was twenty-six when he returned 
to London, and there, by the good offices of his college 
friend Gabriel Harvey, he made personal acquaintance with 
Lord Leicester and Lord Leicester's nephew Sidney. By 
them he was introduced at court, and favorably received 
by the queen, and through them he had access to the best 
political and literary society of the time, v It was while 
residing with Sidney at Penshurst, early in 1580, that The 
Shepherd's Calendar was published, bringing him imme- 
diate and permanent recognition as the foremost poet of 
his day, and that he conceived the idea of his great work 
The Faerie Queene, stimulated thereto by the Orlando Furi- 
oso of Ariosto. It was probably the indifference of the 
Cecils to poetical ability that stood in the way of Spenser's 
advancement at court ; at last he grew tired of his " long 
fruitless stay " in London, and accompanied Lord Grey to 
Ireland in 1580 as private secretary to the deputy. Grey 
did not long remain in Ireland, but Spenser stayed on, 
making the new country his home. He filled various civil 
offices, and was at last awarded a grant of over three thou- 
sand acres of the forfeited estate of the Desmonds at Kil- 
colman, in county Cork. His interest in the English colo- 
nization of Southern Ireland is shown in his masterly and 
even statesmanlike Vieiv of the State of Ireland, his only 
memorable prose work, which remained unpublished for 
thirty-four years after his death. But it was to poetry he 
devoted his first and fullest attention. Ten almost un- 
chronicled but not idle years of his life had passed since 
his first coming to Ireland when Spenser reappeared in 
London in 1590 with the first three books of The Faerie 
Queene. Raleigh, "the shepherd of the ocean," had found 
the exiled poet sitting " amongst the cooly shade of the 
green alders by the Mulla's shore," and, after himself hear- 



EDMUND SPENSER 37 

ing the witching strains of the most musical of poems, had 
brought the poet and his music to Elizabeth, that she too 
might be enchanted. Spenser himself, as Colin, has told 
all the circumstances of this memorable visit to London in 
Raleigh's company in the fine pastoral Colin Clout's Come 
Home Again. Elizabeth rewarded him with a pension of 
£50. His gracious reception at court, and the inspirino- 
influence of London literary society, then at its best and 
busiest, incited Spenser to increased activity, and the re- 
mainder of his life in Ireland up to the tragedy which 
brought it to an abrupt close may, on the whole, be de- 
scribed as one of poetical peace and prosperity, agreeably 
diversified by his marriage (in 1594) and frequent visits to 
London. The succession of his principal works from the 
first appearance of The Faerie Qaeene in 1590 is as follows: 
A collection of minor poems, entitled Complaints (con- 
taining The Ruins of Time, Tears of the Muses, VirgiVs 
Gnat, Mother Huhbard's Tale, The Ruins of Rome, Muio- 
potmos, and three sets of Visions), and the Da.phnaida, both 
published in 1591 ; Colin Clout's Come Home Again, As- 
trophel — an elegy on the death of Sir Philip Sidney — and 
the Amoretti or Love Sonnets, along with the Epithalamion 
or Marriage Song, in 1595; and in 1596, Books IV.-VI. 
of The Faerie Queene, and later in the same year the Four 
Hymns and the Prothalamion. In 1598 Spenser was nom- 
inated Sheriff of Cork. Only a few weeks thereafter began 
the Irish rebellion. The rebels plundered and set fire to his 
castle-home ; one of his children was lost in the flames ; 
he himself fled to England, and died in an inn at Westmin- 
ster, destitute and broken-hearted. 

The Faerie Queene, as we have it, consists of six books of 

twelve cantos each, and two cantos — not the first two and 

a couple of stanzas of a seventh book ; and the first book, 
commencing — after some prefatory verses in imitation of 
Virgil's ^^we/c? — with the well-known line, "A gentle 
knight was pricking on the plain," goes on at once to relate 
the legend of the Red Cross Knight. Thus, without ex- 
plaining the plan and scope of his poem where such an ex- 



88 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

planation is usually looked for, Spenser, to use his own 
words, " thrusteth into the middest " of his subject with 
some abruptness. It was his intention in the twelfth and 
last book to give the necessary explanation ; but as the 
twelfth book has not been preserved, and probably was 
never written, the key to a proper knowledge of the work 
would have been wanting had it not been for Spenser's 
letter of elucidation to Raleigh. From this letter we learn 
that " the general end of all the book is to fashion a gen- 
tleman or noble person in virtuous and gentle discipline." 
The method employed for this moral purpose is "an histor- 
ical fiction," or allegory, with the history of Arthur before 
he was king for a basis. Arthur is to represent Magna- 
nimity, the sum of all the virtues, in the guise of " a brave 
knight perfected in the twelve moral virtues ;" but each of 
the virtues is also to be represented in action by a patron 
knight. Thus Holiness is represented by the Red Cross 
Knight, Temperance by Sir Guyon, Chastity by Britomartis, 
Friendship by Cambel and Triamond, Justice by Artegal, 
and Courtesy by Sir Calidore ; and it was further intended 
to represent in a similar manner by six other knights the 
remaining six virtues of the Aristotelian canon — viz., Con- 
stancy, Truth, Prudence, Courage, Liberality, and Righteous 
Ambition. These twelve knights were in attendance at the 
court of the Fairy Queen, Gloriana, who was to be repre- 
sented in the twelfth book as keeping her annual festi- 
val. On each of the twelve days of the festival, a knight on 
some occasion or other was supposed to have undertaken 
and ridden forth upon an adventure, each to have his vir- 
tue tested by encountering his opponent vice. Meanwhile 
Prince Arthur, who has had a dream of Gloriana, is sup- 
posed to be searching for the Fairy Queen, and comes 
across the various knights-errant at a critical time in their 
several adventures. When next the Fairy Queen holds her 
forest court they are all expected to return and relate their 
various experiences, and at last there is to be the marriage 
of Gloriana and Arthur. 

The interest, to an ordinary reader of The Faerie Queene, 



EDMUND SPENSER 89 

is in the story. It is one of ever-varying, often marvellous, 
adventure — a narrative of doughty knights and distressed 
damsels, grim giants and loathly dragons, fairies and her- 
mits and dwarfs, haunted forests and enchanted castles. A 
deeper interest lies in the moral allegory of the tale, to 
which is even superadded an historical allegory ; for Una rep- 
resents not only Truth, but the Protestant Church ; Duessa, 
not only Error, but Mary Queen of Scots ; Britomartis, not 
only Chastity, but Queen Elizabeth. The Fairy Queen also 
represents Queen Elizabeth and at the same time Glory ; Ar- 
thur stands for Magnanimity and also the Earl of Leicester ; 
Sir Artegal is Justice and Lord Grey; Orgoglio is Antichrist 
and King Philip of Spain ; and so on. 

Two spirits pervade the whole body of Spenser's poetry : 
in The Faerie Queene it is Arthurianism ; in the minor poems 
it is, for the most part, the spirit of a refined Pastoralism. 
The stanza of The Faerie Queene was Spenser's invention, 
and naturally bears his name. Next to blank-verse and the 
heroic couplet, it is the measure best adapted for a long nar- 
rative in English verse. Developed from rhyme royal and 
the sonnet, it consists of a set of nine iambic lines, of which 
the first eight are pentameter, and the ninth an Alexandrine 
or English hexameter ; and the rhymes follow according to 
the formula — ah ah he he c. Spenser's diction is purposely 
archaic ; it is garnished with Chaucerisms, false and true, 
the object being to give an antique flavor to the poem. 
Later poets who have adopted the Spenserian measure have 
also, more or less, followed Spenser's example in the use of 
archaisms, Shenstone and Thomson copiously, Byron in 
Childe Harold more sparingly. The chief features of Spen- 
ser's verse are its ease, fluency, and fulness ; it is always 
musical, flowing with a gliding movement that never jars, 
and that would become monotonous to the ear from its 
maintained sweetness, were it not for the rich succession of 
rare and beautiful imagery which simultaneously fills and 
entertains the imagination. No more musical poet than 
Spenser has ever used the English language, and none per- 
haps had so exquisite a perception of beauty. 



90 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

"Enforst to seeke some covert nigh at hand, 
A shadie grove not farr away they spide, 
That promist ayde the tempest to withstand ; 
Whose loftie trees, yclad with sommers pride. 
Did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide, 
Not perceable with power of any starr : 
And all within were pathes and alleles wide, 
With footing worne, and leading inward farr, 
Faire harbour that them seems, so in they entered ar. 

"And foortli they passe, with pleasure forward led, 
Joying to lieare the birdes sweete harmony, 
Which, therein shrouded from the tempest dred, 
Seemd in their song to scorne the cruell sky. 
Much can they praise the trees so straight and liy. 
The sayling Pine; the Cedar proud and tall; 
The viue-propp Elme ; the Poplar never dry ; 
The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all ; 
The Aspine good for staves ; the Cyprcsse f nnerall ; 

"The Laurell, meed of mightie Conquerours 
And Poets sage ; the Firre that weepeth still ; 
The Willow, worne of forlone Paramours; 
The Eugh,^ obedient to the benders will ; ' Tew 

The Birch for shaftes ; the Sallow^ for the mill ; 
The Mirrhe sweete-bleeding in the bitter wound ; 
The warlike Beech ; the Ash for nothing ill ; 
The fruitful! Olive ; and the Platane round ; 
The carver Hohne; the Maple seeldom inward sound. . . 

"A little lowly Hermitage it was, 
Downe in a dale, hard by a forests side, 
Far from resort of people that did pas 
In traveill to and froe : a little wyde 
There was an holy chappell edifyde, 
Wherein the Hermite dewly wont to say 
His holy thinges each morne and eventyde : 
Tliereby a christall streame did gently play, 
Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway. 

"Arrived there, the litle house they fill, 
Ne looke for eutertainement where none was; 
Rest is their feast, and all thinges at their will: 
The noblest mind the best contentment has. 



EDMUND SPENSER 9I 

With faire discourse the evening so they pas; 
For that olde man of pleasing words had store, 
And well could file his tongue as smooth as glas : 
He told of Saintes and Popes, and evermore 
He strowd an Ave-Mary after and before." 

— The Faerie Queene, book 1. canto 1. 



"And is there care in heaven? And is there love 
In heavenly spirits to these creatures bace, 
That may compassion of their evilles move ? 
There is: else much more wretched were the cace 
Of men than beasts. But O ! th' exceeding grace 
Of highest God that loves his creatures so, 
And all his workes with mercy doth embrace, 
That blessed Angels he sends to and fro, 
To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe. 

"How oft do they their silver bowers leave. 
To come to succour us that succour want! 
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave 
The flitting skyes, like flying Pursuivant, 
Against fowle feendes to ayd us militant! 
They for us fight, they watch and dewly ward, 
And their bright Squadrons round about us plant; 
And all for love, and nothing for reward. 
O ! why should heavenly God to men have such regard ?" 

— Book ii. canto 8. 

"Then came the Autumne all in yellow clad, 
As though he joyed in his plentious store, 
Laden with fruits that made him laugh, full glad 
That he had banisht hunger, which to-fore 
Had by the belly oft him pinched sore : 
Upon his head a wreath, that was enrold 
With ears of corne of every sort, he bore ; 
And in his hand a sickle he did holde. 
To reape the ripened fruits the which the earth 

had y old. "1 ^yielded 

— Book vii. canto 7. 

Great in prose and great in verse, much greater than any 
other English poet whatever, Shakespeare only excepted, and 
the greatest epic poet of modern times, John Milton (1608- 
1674) was born in his father's house, at the sign of the 



92 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

Spread Eagle, in Bread Street, Cheapside, London. He was 
a small boy of eight at the time of Shakespeare's death, and 
it is possible that Shakespeare coming from or going to the 
Mermaid Club, which was in the neighborhood of Bread 
Street, may have seen the boy at play near his father's door. 
His father was a scrivener in good circumstances, and with 
distinctly religious leanings to the side of Puritanism. His 
mother's name was Sarah Bradshaw. He was the third of a 
family of six children, and was of such unusual promise that 
his father from the first spared no expense or trouble for 
the development of his genius. He was carefully educated 
both at school and at home, his evening studies being super- 
intended by a tutor named Thomas Young, a native of 
Perthshire, and a graduate of St. Andrews. It was Young, 
with whom as long as he lived Milton maintained very 
intimate friendly relations, who first gave him a taste for 
poetry and encouraged him to poetical exercises. His Lon- 
don school was St. Paul's, where he remained till he was 
sixteen. But the school-boy was a student from his twelfth 
year, and was allowed from that tender age to sit up at his 
books till midnight, after the household had retired to rest. 
It was probably this early application to learning which 
overtasked his sight, and caused the blindness which over- 
took him in middle age. From St. Paul's young Milton 
went to Christ's College, Cambridge, possessed at his en- 
trance of as much classical knowledge as most young, men 
carry with them at their departure from the university, when 
their education is thought to be complete. 

Milton was an ardent student, and remained at Cambridge 
for seven years, till he graduated M.A. in 1632. As an un- 
dergraduate he had been nicknamed by his fellow-students, 
from his physical beauty and the purity of his moral con- 
duct, " The Lady of Christ's"; but he was an adept in all 
manly exercises, a powerful debater, and an accomplished 
scholar. He was too self-assertive, and too unsympathetic 
with those whose tastes differed from his own, to be at any 
time of his life an amiable person, but nobody could have 
known John Milton without respecting and admiring him. 



JOHN MILTON 93 

His views of the responsibility of life, and especially of his 
own, were from youth of the most pronounced character. 
It was not so much a responsibility to his fellow-men ; the 
sense of being under the eye of the great Taskmaster kept 
his motives and his behavior pure. Ambitious he was to 
excel, but his ambition was the aspiration of a noble mind. It 
was directed by the sacred belief that only from a noble mind 
and a pure life could come any truly great work or achieve- 
ment. This is the key to Milton's personal character and 
history. He was a Puritan, but he belonged to the early 
Puritans, who were neither sour-faced nor fanatical, who 
believed in the beauty of art and the joys of earth as af- 
fording solace and aid to the higher life. 

Milton left Cambridge without choosing a profession, and 
went to live at Horton in Bucks, where his father had set- 
tled in ease and leisure after withdrawing from business in 
London. Here, within ready access of London (the dis- 
tance is only seventeen miles), in the midst of rich pastoral 
and sylvan scenery, Milton had a long delightful holiday of 
five years, spent for the most part in intercourse with nat- 
ure and poetry, and in the prosecution of such contrasted 
studies as music and mathematics. Here he seems to have 
abandoned all thought of entering either the Church or the 
law — professions which at successive times had drawn his 
attention — and to have begun to prepare himself with ex- 
clasive devotion for the calling of a poet. It was at Horton 
that he wrote the best of his minor poems — V Allegro and 
// Penseroso in 1632, The Masque of Comus in 1634, and 
Lycidas in 1637. But he had begun versifying at school; 
and at college had produced poems of commanding merit, 
and still more convincing promise, in the Ode on the Nativ- 
ity — the first poem of his manhood, written at twenty-one — 
and the Sonnet on being arrived at the Age of Twenty-three. 
Before he was thirty Milton had already done enough to 
rank him with Spenser and Wordsworth. The Horton 
period of Milton's life came to an end shortly after, and 
partly because of, the death of his mother in 1637. 

In 1638 he was in Italy. He saw and made many friends 



94 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

in Florence, Naples, and Rome ; and returned to England, 
without visiting Greece, after an absence of more than a 
year, recalled by a sense of duty — " inasmuch as I thought 
it base to be travelling at my ease for amusement while my 
fellow-countrymen at home were fighting for liberty." The 
rumor of those civil disturbances, which afterwards kindled 
into war, had reached his ears, and he hurried home to 
watch the progress of events, and aid the cause of purity in 
the Church and freedom in the State. 

We come now to that period of Milton's life during which 
he was a householder in London. It may be divided into 
three parts. The first part extends over ten years, from 
1639 to 1649. During this time he kept a school, which 
was attended by (among other boys of good family) his 
nephews the Phillipses, sons of his sister Anne ; married a 
young wife of seventeen, Mary Powell, daughter of an Ox- 
fordshire squire, a Royalist, who owed him money ; and 
broucrht his father, and afterwards his father-in-law and the 
Powells, to share his home. Meanwhile his pen was busy — 
chiefly with prose polemics against Prelacy. In this con- 
troversy he took part with the Smectymnuans against Bishop 
Hall. Smectymnuus was originally a party of five Puritans, 
bent on reforming the English Church by bringing it nearer 
to the Presbyterian model. The word Smectymnuus was 
made from the initials of their names, and it is interesting 
to note that the middle letters of the word stand for Thomas 
Young, Milton's early tutor. It was in this part of his Lon- 
don citizenship also that Milton wrote his four tracts on 
divorce. The cause of this remarkable series of pamphlets 
was a personal one. Mary Powell, after staying with him a 
month, deserted him for two years, and, in his fury, Milton 
tried to force on public attention the necessity for a reform 
of the marriage laws. His other prose work of the ten 
years before us consisted of the Areopagitica, a sublimely 
eloquent appeal to Parliament for the free expression of 
ideas, usually regarded as Milton's masterpiece in prose ; 
and a letter to Samuel Hartlib on the superiority of a classi- 
cal education — both produced in 1644. All these ten years 



JOHN MILTON 



95 



poetry was to Milton rather a dream than an enjoyment, 
yet he found time to write (in Latin, unfortunately) a finer 
elegy than even Lycidas, the Epltaphium Damonis, or la- 
ment for the death of his dearest friend, Carl Diodati ; time 
also to write, as occasion served, eight sonnets; and time 
to issue an edition (in 1645) of his early poems. 

The second part of Milton's life as a householder in 
London also stretches over ten years, from 1649 to 1659. 
During this time he held the office of Foreign or Latin 
Secretary to the Commonwealth, with a salary nearly equal 
to £1000 of our money. He had parted company with 
the Presbyterians for both personal and public reasons, and 
had attached himself to the Independents, or Cromwellian 
party. Immediately on the execution of Charles he com- 
menced the series of his political prose pamphlets on regi- 
cide by issuing The Tenure of Kings, in which he boldly 
characterized the terrible action as one of highest justice. 
It was for this that he was appointed to office. Then fol- 
lowed in succession his Eikonohlastes, a rancorous assault 
on the dead king ; his Defensio pro Populo Anglicano, writ- 
ten in Latin, against the hired attack of the great French 
scholar Salmasius ; and the Defensio Secunda — all learned 
and eloquent compositions, but stained with coarse invective 
and foul abuse, incredible to those who have not read them. 
In this period Milton became totally blind (1652), but with- 
out disfigurement; his wife died (1653), leaving behind her 
the three daughters who afterwards proved unfilial ; Andrew 
Marvell was appointed his assistant in the Foreign Office ; 
and Milton married (1656) his second wife, Catharine Wood- 
cock, whose death, scarcely more than a year afterwards, he 
sincerely lamented. He also continued from time to time 
to write sonnets ; and the eight which were the product of 
these ten years contain his best work of this kind. They 
include his noble encouragement of Cromwell, and of Sir 
Henry Vane ; and his cry for vengeance on the triple tyrant 
for the massacre in Piedmont : these were the trumpet- 
notes to which Wordsworth's well-known sonnet on the 
Sonnet pointedly refers. 



96 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

The third period of Milton's life as a householder in 
London extends over fourteen years, from 1660 to 1674. 
He had now fallen on evil tongues and evil days. His life 
was in danger, and he went into hiding till the Act of 
Oblivion was passed. His life was now one of neglect, ob- 
scurity, and comparative poverty. Yet he had friends to 
cheer his loneliness. His third wife was Elizabeth Min- 
shull, whom he married in 1664 ; Thomas EUwood, a young 
scholar, used to read to him ; and he had a good physician 
in Dr. Paoret. But his chief consolation was in the com- 
position of the sublime epics. Paradise Lost and Paradise 
Regained, and the sacred drama of Samson Agonistes. The 
Paradise Lost was finished in 1665, and published in 1667 ; 
Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes appeared together 
in 1671. Ten pounds was all that Milton himself received 
for his great poem ;. and his widow parted with the copy- 
right for an additional eight. Milton also wrote during his 
blindness a History of Britain, published in 1670. Milton 
died of gout on Sunday, November 8, 1674. 

Milton's great merits of style are the noble and varied 
harmony of his numbers, and the astonishing force and 
magnificence of his imagery. His periods are long and in- 
volved, yet always in his verse built up with the most per- 
fect symmetry. In his prose, which chiefly differs from his 
verse in the absence of metrical rhythm, this symmetry is 
wan tin o; ; the construction is loose and careless, and the 
sentence often runs to several hundreds of words. He im- 
ported many classical words and idioms, and illustrates 
largely with classical mythology and literature. Indeed, he 
is the most learned of poets. 

" No war, or battle's sound, 
Was heard the world around ; 
The idle spear and shield were high uphung ; 
The hooked chariot stood, 
Unstained with hostile blood ; 
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng ; 
And kings sat still with awful eye, 
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by. . . . 



JOHN MILTON 97 

The Oracles are dumb ; 
No voice or hideous hum 
Kuns through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
Apollo from his shrine 
Can no more divine, 
"With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
No nightly trance, or breathed spell, 
Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. 

"The lonely mountains o'er. 
And the resounding shore, 
A voice of weeping heard and loud lament; 
From haunted spring, and dale 
Edged with poplar pale, 
The parting Genius is with sighing sent ; 
With flower-inwoven tresses torn 

The Nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn." 

— Hymn on tlie Nativity. 



"Two such I saw, what time the laboured ox 
In his loose traces from the furrow came, 
And the swinked hedger at his supper sat. 
I saw them under a green mantling vine, 
That crawls along the side of yon small hill. 
Plucking ripe clusters from the tender shoots ; 
Their port was more than human, as they stood. 
I took it for a faery vision 
Of some gay creatures of the element. 
That in the colours of the rainbow live. 
And play i' the plighted clouds. I was awe-strook, 
And, as I passed, I worshipped. If those you seek, 
It were a journey like the path to Heaven 
To help you find them." 

— Comus. 

"When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide, 
And that one talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest He returning chide, 
' Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ?' 
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 

That murmur, soon replies, 'God doth not need 
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best 



98 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-16C0 

Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state 
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed, 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait.'" 

— On his Blindness. 

"Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son, 

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire, 
Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire 
Help waste a sullen day, what may be won 

From the hard season gaining ? Time will run 
On smoother, till Favouius reinspire 
The frozen earth, and clothe in fresh attire 
The lily and rose, that neither sowed nor spun. 

What neat repast shall feast us, light and choice, 
Of Attic taste, with wine, whence we may rise 
To hear the lute well touched, or artful voice 

Warble immortal notes and Tuscan air? 

He who of those delights can judge, and spare 
To interpose them oft, is not unwise." 

— To Mr. Lawrence. 

"Straight he commands that, at the warlike sound 

Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared 

His mighty standard. That proud honour claimed 

Azazel as his right, a cherub tall: 

Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled 

The imperial ensign; which, full high advanced, 

Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, 

With gems and golden lustre rich emblazed, 

Seraphic arms and trophies; all the while 

Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds: 

At which the universal host upsent 

A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond 

Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 

All in a moment through the gloom were seen 

Ten thousand banners rise into the air, 

With orient colours waving : with them rose 

A forest huge of spears ; and thronging helms 

Appeared, and serried shields in thick array 

Of depth immeasurable." „ ,. ^ , , , . 

— Paradise Lost, book i. 

'* Sweet is the breath of Morn, her rising sweet. 
With charm of earliest birds; pleasant the sun, 
When first on this delightful land he spreads 



OTHER POETS 



99 



His orient beams, on herb, tree, fruit, and flower, 
Glistening with dew; fragrant the fertile Earth 
After soft showers ; and sweet the coming-on 
Of grateful Evening mild ; then silent Night, 
With this her solemn bird; and this fair Moon, 
And these the gems of Heaven, her starry train: 
But neither breath of Morn, when she ascends 
With charm of earliest birds ; nor rising Sun 
On this delightful land ; nor herb, fruit, flower. 
Glistering with dew; nor fragrance after showers. 
Nor grateful Evening mild ; nor silent Night, 
With this her solemn bird ; nor walk by moon, 
Or glittering star-light, without thee is sweet." 

— Paradise Lost, book iv. 

"Look once more, ere we leave this specular mount, 
Westward, much nearer by southwest ; behold 
Where on the ^gean shore a city stands, 
Built nobly, pure the air and light the soil — 
Athens, the eye of Greece, mother of arts 
And eloquence, native to famous wits 
Or hospitable, in her sweet recess. 
City or suburban, studious walks and shades. 
See there the olive grove of Academe, 
Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird ; 
Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long; 
There, flowery hill, Hymettus, with the sound 
Of bees' industrious murmur, oft invites 
To studious musing ; there Ilissus rolls 
His whispering stream." 

— Paradise Regained, book iv. 

OTHER POETS 

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), whose character would have 
adorned the most chivalrous of Arthur's knights, was not only a 
man of action, but a patron of literature, and the friend of poets 
such as Spenser, and himself a poet of no mean rank in both prose 
and verse. He was born at Penshurst in Kent, a scion of one of 
the noblest families of England ; was educated at Christchurch 
College, Oxford ; and spent three years of his youth in Continental 
travel. In his twenty-first year he was one of the most accom- 
plished cavaliers of his age, and was even regarded by Queen 
Elizabeth as the jewel of her time. An impetuosity of temper 
was perhaps the only blemish of his knightly character. In him the 



100 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

poet and the soldier were strangely blended. Now he is penning 
amourist sonnets of tender devotion to Stella, now he is contem- 
plating an expedition with Sir Francis Drake to the Spanish main; 
at one time he is dreaming of an ideal Arcadia among the bowers 
of Wilton, at another charging the Spaniards on the plains of 
Zutphen. It was at Zutphen he received his fatal wound, an 
event forever associated with the Avell-known anecdote of the cup 
of water and the dying soldier. Sidney's poetry shows Italian in- 
fluence in both tlie form and the theme ; it is best exemplified in 
his series of love sonnets, Astro])liel and Stella, poetical names for 
himself and Penelope Devereux, daughter of the Earl of Essex. 
One of these, beginning "With how sad steps, O moon !" has been 
described as "the first perfectly charming sonnet in the English 
language." His prose consists of a pastoral romance which he 
wrote for the entertainment of his sister, and which he called in 
her honor The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, and a spirited de- 
fence of the poetical art, The Apology for Poetry, written in reply 
to the attack of Stephen Gosson, a Puritan minister. Both works, 
but especially the former, are in the style of the Ewphues of Lyly, 
The Apology is the first piece of literary criticism we have; in 
the drama Sidney insists on the preservation of the Three Unities, 
and the exclusion of comic scenes from tragedy. Fortunately the 
school of Shakespeare followed its own natural instincts. 

" With how sad steps, O moon ! thou climb'st the skies. 
How silently, and with how wan a face ! 
What may it be, that even in heavenly place 
That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ? 
Sure, if that long with love-acquainted eyes 
Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case; 
I read it in thy looks, thy languished grace 
To me that feel the like thy state descries. 
Then, even of fellowship, O moon, tell me, 
Is constant love deemed there but want of wit ? 
Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? 
Do they above love to be loved, and yet 
Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess ? 
Do they call virtue there ungratefulness ?" 

Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) was the son of a music-master near 
Taunton in Somersetshire, was educated at Oxford, and became 
tutor to Lady Anne Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Cumberland. 
He found powerful friends in the Earls of Pembroke and South- 
ampton, and Sir Philip Sidney; and in the reign of James I. filled 
various minor appointnaents at pourt. For the most part, how- 



OTHER POETS 101 

ever, his London life was that of the literary recluse. He spent his 
last years on a small estate of his own in his native county. He 
was a man, like Wordsworth, of a contemplative turn of mind and 
correct tastes, and his amiable disposition made him very much 
esteemed by his contemporaries. He wrote a series of amatory son- 
nets, inscribed to Delia, and a great number of historical poems, 
of which the best is The Complaint of Rosamond, and the longest 
a History of the Civil Wars of York and Lancaster. His style is 
strangely modern, and is remarkable for its purity, correctness, 
and fluency. He has been called " the well-languaged Daniel." 
Sweetness is the chief characteristic of his poetry; but he is want- 
ing in strength, and has no passion even in his Delia sonnets. He 
also wrote Cleopatra, a tragedy in the classical style, and some 
pastoral dramas. A prose essay of his, a Defence of Rhyme, is 
memorable for having checked the attempted introduction of 
classical metres into English versification, which Gabriel Harvey 
was so anxious for Spenser to adopt. 

"He that of such a height hath built his mind, 
And reared the dwelling of his thoughts so strong, 
As neither hope nor fear can shake the frame 
Of his resolved powers ; nor all the wind 
Of vanity or malice pierce to wrong 
His settled peace, or to disturb the same : 
What a fair seat hath he, from whence he may 
The boundless wastes and wilds of man survey !" 

—Epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. 

" Ah, I remember well — and how can I 
But evermore remember well ? — when first 
Our flame began, when scarce we knew what was 
The flame we felt ; when as we sat and sighed 
And looked upon eacli other, and conceived 
Not what we ailed, yet something we did ail. 
And yet were well, and yet we were not well, 
And what was our disease we could not tell." 

— Early Love. 

A more vigorous, and even more voluminous, historical poet 
than Daniel was his contemporary, Michael Drayton (1563-1631). 
Like Shakespeare, whom he knew, Drayton was from Warwick- 
shire, and well acquainted with the Bohemianism of literary Lon- 
don, yet never at home in it ; we are told that he never learned 
to " swagger in a tavern." Under various patronage he began to 
write early, and wrote with steady industry all through his life. 



102 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

Besides a collection of love-sonnets, inscribed in the fashion of the 
times to an imaginary mistress, Idea, Drayton wrote The Barons' 
Wars, and England's Heroical Epistles. The last was published in 
1598. His great work, great more especially in size, PolyolUon, 
was the achievement of his later life. It began to appear in 1612, 
and was completed in 1622. It is in rhymed English hexameters, 
and consists of many thousands of lines, divided into thirty songs 
or cantos— a canto for each county. The scope of this huge 
poem is vast enough to take in whatever may be imagined to make 
for the glor}' of England. It is a storehouse of historical, bio- 
graphical, topographical, and antiquarian information; a poetical 
monument of patriotic industry. The undoubted patriotic fire of 
Drayton shows to more advantage in his famous ballad of Agin- 
court — the precursor of the scarcely more admirable war-odes of 
Campbell. Much of the easy mastery of verse, the masculine 
frankness of expression, which afterwards characterized Dryden, 
will be found in Drayton. 

"Fair stood the wind for France, 
When we our sails advance, 
Nor now to prove our chance 

Longer will tarry ; 
But putting to the main, 
At Caux, the mouth of Seine, 
With all his martial train. 

Landed King Harry. . . . 

"The Duke of York so dread 
The eager vaward led ; 
With the main Henry sped, 

Amongst his henchmen ; 
Excester had the rear, 
A braver man not there : 
O Lord, how hot they were 

On the false Frenchmen ! 

"They now to fight are gone, 
Armour on armour shone, 
Drum now to drum did groan, 

To hear was wonder ; 
That with the cries they make 
The very earth did shake, 
Trumpet to trumpet spake. 

Thunder to thunder," etc. 

— The Battle of Agincourt. 



OTHER POETS 103 

"In this our spacious isle, I think there is not one 
But he hath heard some tallt of him and Little John ; 
And to the end of time, the tales shall ne'er be done 
Of Scarlock, George-a-Green, and Much the miller's son, 
Of Tuck the merry friar, Avhich many a sermon made 
In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade. 
An hundred valiant men had this brave Robin Hood, 
Still ready at his call, that bowmen were right good, . . , 
And of these archers brave, there was not any one, 
But he could kill a deer his swiftest speed upon, 
Which they did boil and roast, ia many a mighty wood 
Sharp hunger the fine sauce to their more kingly food. 
Then taking him to rest, his merry men and he 
Slept many a summer's night under the greenwood-tree. 
From wealthy abbots' chests and churls' abundant store, 
What oftentimes he took he shared amongst the poor." 

— Polyolbion (Robin Hood). 

One of the most admired and perhaps influential poets of the 
period w^as John Donue (1573-1631), praised for his satirical wit. 
Carew described him as "a king who ruled as he thought fit the 
universal monarchy of wit," and Dryden declared him to be " the 
greatest wit of the nation." He probably inherited his wit from 
his mother, who was related to Sir Thomas More. When middle- 
aged, Donne became a clergyman, was extremely popular as a 
preacher, and rose to be Dean of St. Paul's. His satires are rough 
but vigorous, both in versification and sentiment ; they contain a 
great many original and truly poetical ideas, often felicitously 
expressed, but his imagination, or rather fancy, carries him fre- 
quently beyond the limits of good taste and even propriety ; and 
his passion for conceits, far-fetched similes, and recondite phrases 
makes his meaning often obscure. His rugged metre, contorted 
and condensed expression, and ingenious allusion seem to antici- 
pate the style of Browning. 

His name suggests that of Joseph Hall (1574-1656), a satirist of 
more smoothness but less force, whose Vergidemiarum belongs to 
the sixteenth century. Hall rose to be Bishop of Norwich, and 
laid aside satire for Church polemics. Young Milton and the Smec- 
tymnuans were his opponents. 

John Marston (1575 ?-1634), better known as a dramatist, also 
wrote satire, virulent and crudely expressed, but laid it aside on 
entering the Church. 

The brothers Giles and Phineas Fletcher, both born— Giles, the 
elder — some time between 1580 and 1590, were both clergymen, 
and wrote allegorical poetry with an inspiration derived entirely 



104 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

from Spenser. Christ'' s Yiciory and Tnum])h, by Giles, and The 
Purple Island (or Isle of Man) of Pbineas, had the honor to be 
studied and borrowed from by Milton, especially in his early 
poems. They are the link between Spenser and Milton. 

Another Spenserian, also serviceable to the opening genius of 
Milton, was William Browne (1590-1645), whose Britannia's Pas- 
torals began to appear in 1613. His other verse, The Shepherd's 
Pipe, a series of seven eclogues, like the Pastorals, is redolent of 
the country and rural leisure ; at the same time it shows a gift of 
artistic description which, coupled with his genuine love of nat- 
ure, made him a favorite of Keats, who in many points curiously 
recalls and resembles him. 

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585-1649), though a Scots- 
man, is remarkable as being, next after Shakespeare, the best 
writer of sonnets of the Elizabethan age. He was educated at 
Edinburgh and in France, and divided his time after his twenty- 
fifth year between residing at his lovely ancestral seat in the ro- 
mantic valley of the Esk and travelling on the Continent in search 
of peace of mind, or at least diversion from private sorrow. He 
was of an extremely sensitive and refined nature, and a pensive 
and even melancholy cast of mind — qualities which are reflected 
in his best verse. Besides sonnets, he wrote Flowers of 8ion, a col- 
lection of sacred pieces ; Forth Feasting, a poem in honor of King 
James's visit to Scotland; and an essay in prose entitled The 
Cypress Orove, which attempts to reconcile man to his mortality. 
The most noteworthy literary incident in the outward life of 
Drummond was the visit which Ben Jonson paid him in the spring 
of 1619. The execution of Charles I. is said to have hastened 
his death. 

"Stay, passenger, see where enclosed lies 
The paragon of Princes, fairest frame 
Time, nature, place, could show to mortal eyes, 
In worth, wit, virtue and miracle of fame : 
At least that part the earth of him could claim 
This marble holds — hard like the Destinies — 
For as to his brave spirit, and glorious name, 
The one the world, the other fills the skies. 
Th' immortal amaranthus, princely rose. 
Sad violet, and that sweet flower that bears 
In sanguine spots the tenor of our woes, 
Spread on this stone, and wash it with your tears ; 
Then go and tell from G-ades unto Ind 
You saw where Earth's perfections were confined." 
— Epitaph on Prince Henry. 



OTHER POETS 105 

George "Wither (1588-1667), a native of Hampshire, and educat- 
ed at Oxford, began his career with a volume of satirical verse 
— Abuses Wiipt and Sirij^t — for which he was thrown into prison. 
There he continued to poetize, and produced probably his finest 
work, The Shejjlierd's Hunting. When the Civil War was inevita- 
ble, he sold his patrimony to raise a troop for the Parliament. In 
the course of the war he was captured by the Royalists, and was 
in danger of execution, when a brother poet, Denham, jocularly 
interfered to save him. " So long as he lives," said Denham, "I 
am not the worst poet in England !" In the despoliation of Royal- 
ist estates. Wither, now a major-general of Cromwell's, managed 
to repay himself for all his trouble ; but being stripped of his 
gains at the Restoration, he raised an outcry which was found to 
be libellous, and he was again committed to jail. Here again he 
found consolation in writing verses. 

Wither's poetical work is remarkable for its inequality. At its 
best it is singularly spontaneous and charming, but a good deal of 
it is doggerel. Like William Browne, he had a genuine love of 
nature, and a rare art of faithful description. But he had also the 
true lyrical gift, as testified by the songs with which The Shep- 
herd's Hunting and The Mistress of Philarete are interspersed, and 
by his Hymns and Songs of the Church. 

" Shall I, wasting in despair, 
Die because a woman's fair? 
Or make pale my cheeks with care, 
'Cause another's rosy are ? 
Be she fairer than the day. 
Or the flow'ry meads in May ; 
If she be not so to me. 
What care I how fair she be ?" 
— Song. 

" For pleasant was that Pool ; and near it, then, 
Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen. 
It was not overgrown with boisterous sedge, 
Nor grew there rudely, then, along the edge 
A bending willow, nor a prickly bush, 
Nor broad -leafed flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush: 
But here, well ordered, was a grove with bowers ; 
There, grassy plots, set round about with flowers. 
Here, you might, through the water, see the land 
Appear, strewed o'er with white or yellow sand. 
Yon, deeper was it ; and the wind, by whiffs, 
Would make it rise, and wash the little cliffs ; 



106 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

On which, oft pluming, sate, unfrighted then, 
The gagling wild goose, and the snow-white swan, 
With all those flocks of fowl, which, to this day. 
Upon those quiet waters breed and play." 

— The Mistress of Philarete (Alresford Pool). 

Among the lyrical poets of the period a high place must be 
allowed to Thomas Carew (1589-1639). He was of a Gloucester- 
shire branch of the famous Carews of Devonshire, was educated 
at Oxford, travelled abroad, and ultimately became a courtier with 
the office of cup-bearer to King Charles. He was numbered of 
the tribe of Ben, and lived the loose gay life of which his lyrics 
are the melodious expression, till, according to his friend Hyde, 
the future historian, reflection brought repentance, and he be- 
came, in the practice of his later life, a sincere Christian. Carew 
has been unjustly condemned by Hazlitt as "an elegant Court 
trifler " in poetry. But it must be granted that he was a master of 
lyrical form, and that he had a rare sense of delicacy, which he 
combined too seldom with a manly glow and vigor of passion. 
He just misses being the equal of Herrick. Carew wrote little, 
but most of it is of exquisite quality. The song beginning "Ask 
me no more" is a fair specimen of his less ardent love poems ; and 
he wrote a noble elegy on the death of Donne. 

"Ask me no more where Jove bestows, 
When June is past, the fading rose ; 
For in your beauties, orient deep. 
These flowers, as in their causes, sleep. 

"Ask me no more whither do stray 
The golden atoms of the day ; 
For in pure love heaven did prepare 
Those powders to enrich your hair. 

"Ask me no more whither doth haste 
The nightingale when May is past ; 
For in your sweet dividing throat 
She winters, and keeps warm her note. 

"Ask me no more if east or west 
The Phoenix builds her spicy nest ; 
For unto you at last she flies. 
And in your fragrant bosom dies !" 

The Divine EmUems of Francis Quarles (1592-1644), first pub- 
lished the year after his death, have long been popular in the 



OTHER POETS 107 

English rural districts, and are remarkable as conveying the 
somewhat puritanical sentiments in religion and morality of a 
Royalist poet. Quarles wrote far too much to write much well; 
his verse alone — for he wrote prose besides — runs to very many 
thousands of lines. His strain of commonplace moralizing, how- 
ever, took the fancy of the common people, and he has been as 
much admired as Young, if not more, and for the same reason. 
Quarles belonged to Essex, was educated at Cambridge, held a 
court appointment, and the office of chronologer to the city of 
London. He suffered much persecution latterly at the hands of 
the Roundheads. 

"Holy" George Herbert (1593-1632) has been as long and as 
widely popular as Quarles, and with a slightly better claim to 
popularity. His reputation rests on The Temple, the fanciful title 
of a collection of religious and moral pieces, of which the hymn 
on Virtue is a perfect specimen. Herbert was born in Montgom- 
ery Castle, the fifth son of a family of aristocratic rank and con- 
nections, and the brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He was 
educated at Cambridge, was made a Fellow of Trinity, and held 
the post of Public Orator for eight years. He had excellent hopes 
of court preferment and political office under James I., but sud- 
denly turned his attention from secular to sacred matters, became 
a clergyman, married a wife, and settled to the humble duties of a 
country parson at Bemerton, near Salisbury. He died of con- 
sumption in his fortieth year. His biography has been written 
with a charming simplicity by Izaak Walton. 

English lyrical literature holds no more cheerful song-bird than 
Robert Herrick (1594-1674). His song is spontaneous and free. 
It expresses with a pagan boldness and sincerity of note the va- 
ried delights of life, and the joy of living ; and if there is also a 
subtle strain of sadness at the transitoriness of life, it comes only 
to relieve the joy and to heighten it. The real Herrick, who is 
pagan, is in the Hesperides ; in the NohU Numbers it is the Rever- 
end Robert Herrick, the Christian clergyman, who seeks to adapt 
his song to the piety of his profession. His hearty relish of this 
life is more apparent, and was presumably more sincere, than his 
belief in another, though he has expressed that belief with singu- 
lar force in The Litany, the best and best known of his pious 
pieces. The contrast between his two volumes is increased when 
one remembers that they came out together in the year 1648. 
The Hesperides volume consists of hundreds of short poems — some 
of his epigrams, the most sensual part of his verse, extending to 
only a couple of lines — on such subjects as flowers, fruits, wine, 
childhood and youth, love, female beauty, rustic sports, and festi- 
vals, and the picturesque superstitions of folk-lore. It includes 



108 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

such haunting lyrics as The Apron of Flowers, Water ISfymplis at a 
Fountain., A Nuptial Song to Glipseby Grew, The Mad Ifaid's Song, 
and To the Willoio - Tree, as well as the more familiarly known 
pieces, To Daffodils and To Blossoms, To Julia, Grace for a Ghild, 
Gather the Rose-buds, the exquisite song To Anthea, and Gorinna 
Maying. Of the outward life of Herrick not much is known. He 
was born in London not later than 1594, and possibly before that ; 
was educated at Cambridge; was, like Carew, of the tribe of Ben, 
whose tavern associate he was ; became, when about forty, a 
clergyman, and was appointed to a charge at Dean Prior in Dev- 
onshire, where he was sufficientl}^ out of place till he and his 
" salvages," his rustic parishioners, better understood each other; 
lost his living during the Civil War ; was restored to it again in 
1660, and survived the Restoration fourteen years. 

"Good morrow to the day so fair ! 

Good morrow, sir, to you ! 
Good morrow to mine own torn hair 

Bedabbled with the dew ! 
Good morrow to this primrose too ! 

Good morrow to each maid 
That will with flowers the tomb bestrew 

Wherein my love is laid ! 
Ah ! woe is me ! woe — woe is me ! 

Alack and well-a-day ! 
For pity, sir, find out that bee 

Which bore my love away ! . . . 
Pray, hurt him not ! though he be dead, 

He knows well who do love him, 
And who with green-turfs rear his head 

And who do rudely move him ! 
He's soft and tender, pray take heed, 

With bands of cowslips bind him, 
And bring him home ! — But 'tis decreed 

That I shall never find him !" 

—The Mad Maid's Song. 

"Reach, with your whiter hands, to me 
Some crystal of the spring. 
And I about the cup shall see 

Fresh lilies flourishing. 
Or else, sweet nymphs, do you but this— 

To the glass your lips incline. 
And I shall see by that one kiss 
The water turned to wine !" 
— To the Water- Nymphs Drinking at the Fountain. 



OTHER POETS 109 

"Gather the rose-buds while you may, 

Old Time is still a-flyiug, 
And this same flower that smiles to-day, 

To-morrow will be dying. 
The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun, 

The higher he's a-getting, 
The sooner will his race be run, 

And nearer he's to setting. 
That age is best Avhicli is the first, 

When youth and blood are warmer ; 
But, being spent, the worse, and worst 

Time shall succeed the former. 
Then be not coy, but use your time. 

And while ye may, go marry; 
For, having lost but once your prime, 

You may forever tarry." 

— To tlie Virgins, to make miicli of their Time. 

Sir John Suckling- (1608-1642) was an amateur writer, as his 
leisure or his fancy inclined him, of exquisite if too frequently 
immoral songs. He held the opinion that a gentleman should not 
take too much trouble with his verses ; but the opinion will not 
excuse the wretched doggerel which he sometimes suffered himself 
to write. He wrote on love, and gloried in inconstancy — after be- 
ing puzzled to explain it : 

"And yet the face continues good. 
And I have still desires. 
Am still the selfsame flesh and blood, 

As apt to melt and suffer from those fires : 
Oh ! some kind power, unriddle where it lies. 
Whether my heart be faulty, or her eyes!" 

In this aspect of his songs he offers a contrast to Richard Lovelace 
(1618-1650), whose two lyrics — To Althea from Prison, and To Lu- 
casta on Going to the Wars — represent their author as the devotedly 
constant and honorable lover : 

"I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
Loved I not honour more." 

Suckling's best known and most quotable poems are the two lyr- 
ics, Out upon it, I have lori'd three ichole days together, and Why so 
pale and wan, fond lover? and the Ballad on a Wedding. The life 
of Suckling was full of adventure and change. He was the son of 
a Secretary of State, educated at Cambridge, and inherited, while 



110 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

still under age, an immense fortune. He travelled, and saw ser- 
vice as a soldier on the Continent ; he joined the Cavaliers on the 
outbreak of civil war in England, and, despite his losses by gam- 
bling at cards and bowls, equipped at his own expense a body of 
a hundred horse, which looked magnificently martial, but fled at 
sight of the Scots. He afterwards retired to France, where he 
committed suicide. Lovelace had similiar fortune; he too became 
a Cavalier, wasted his patrimony in the cause, and, falling into 
utter destitution, died in rags in a London slum. With these 
two Cavalier poets may be associated another whose heroic life 
is writ large in history — James Grahame, "the great" Marquis of 
Montrose, memorable here for this song beginning "My dear and 
only love, 1 pray." 

" Her feet beneath her petticoat, 
Like little mice, stole in and out, 

As if they feared the light : 
But oh ! she dances such a way I 
No sun upon an Easter-day 

Is half so fair a sight. . . . 

"Her cheeks so rare a white was on, 
No daisy makes comparison ; 

Who sees them is undone ; 
For streaks of red were mingled there, 
Such as are on a Cath'rine pear, 

The side that's next the sun. 

"Her lips were red; and one was thin, 
Compared to that was next her chin, 

Some bee had stung it newly; 
But, Dick, her eyes so guard her face, 
I durst no more upon them gaze 
Than on the sun in July." 

—A Ballad upon a Wedding (by Suckling). 

** Out upon it, I have loved 

Three whole days together ; 
And am like to love three more. 

If it prove fair weather. 
Time shall moult away his wings. 

Ere he shall discover 
In the whole wide world again 

Such a constant lover. 
But the spite on't is, no praise 

Is due at all to me; 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE HI 

Love with me had made no stays, 

Had it any been but she. 
Had it any been but she, 

And that very face, 
There had been at least ere this 

A dozen iu her place," 

— Constancy (by Suckling). 

** Stone walls do not a prison make, 
Nor iron bars a cage ; 
Minds, innocent and quiet, take 

That for a hermitage : 
If I have freedom in my love, 

And in my soul am free, 
Angels alone, that soar above, 
Enjoy such liberty," 

— To Althea (by Lovelace). 

Richard Crashaw (1613?-1650) is the most notable writer of re- 
ligious lyrics of the period. He is exceedingly unequal, and 
probably never corrected what he had written, but at his best he 
rises to a high pitch of poetical fervor. He wrote Step^. to the 
Temple, &c. , the fanciful title of a volume of verse, religious and 
secular, which contains among other things The Weeper, The Flam- 
ing Heart, and The Music-Duel between a Lover and a Nightin- 
gale, in which the lover is the victor— the last a translation from 
the Latin. Crashaw, though he disfigures his verse with conceits, 
is singularly rich in poetical thought, and often singularly happy 
in his phrases. Cowley, who befriended him in Paris, and ad- 
mired him both for his poetical ability and for his saintly charac- 
ter, wrote his elegy. He died a canon of the Roman Catholic 
Church at Loretto in Italy, whither he had gone by way of 
Paris on being (1644) deprived by the Parliament of his Fellow, 
ship at Cambridge. One memorial of his student days deserves to 
be quoted — the famous verse which describes the miracle of Cana: 

" Vidit, et erubuit nympha pudica Deum," 

happily rendered 

"The conscious water saw her God, and blushed." 

DRAMATIC POETS 

It is claimed for William Shakespeare (1564-1616) that 
he is the greatest of all writers, ancient or modern, and the 
claim is generally allowed. The greatness of his fame has 



112 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

naturally excited great interest in his life, and thousands of 
fancies have been put forth to gratify the very laudable de- 
sire to know all about him ; but the facts upon which we can 
really rely for our knowledge of his personal history still re- 
main sufficiently scanty. He was the third of a family of 
eight children born in Stratford to John Shakespeare and 
his wife Mary Arden, both of them Warwickshire people. 
Through his mother he was connected with the landed 
gentry ; through his father, a trader in Henley Street, 
he belonged to a race of yeomen. He was baptized on 
the 26th of April (old style), 1564, his father being at the 
time in prosperous circumstances, and looking shortly to be 
made mayor of Stratford. Fourteen years afterwards John 
Shakespeare fell into poverty, and the probable effect was 
the interruption of his son's education. At all events, young 
Shakespeare, though not without some classical training, had 
little school learning. His youth seems to have been wild 
and passionate. Before he was nineteen he married Anne 
Hathaway, who belonged to the village of Shottery, beside 
Stratford, and was his senior by seven years. Two or three 
years later he ran off alone to London to seek his fortune, 
and by the year 1592 was apparently on the way to find it. 
He was then connected both as actor and playwright with 
one of the London theatres. His success was exciting the 
jealousy of envious men like Greene, and the admiration 
of candid men like Chettle. In 1593 his first published 
work appeared — the long descriptive poem of Venus and 
Adonis ; Lucrece followed next year. His fame as a poet began 
with those poems. He was now thirty, and had influential 
friends — among them the young Earl of Southampton. It 
was now also that the long and brilliant series of his great 
plays began rapidly to appear. By the time he was thirty- 
four he was rich enough to buy one of the best houses. New 
Place as it was called, in his native Stratford. This was his 
home for the rest of his life, though his triple connection 
with the London theatre as actor, playwriter, and part pro- 
prietor did not permit of his personal settlement in the 
country till ten or twelve years later. 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 113 

Shakespeare's career of prosperity met with no reverse, 
and his genius showed no sign of decay. From the time he 
purchased New Place he went on amassing property, in 
houses in London, in both lands and houses in Warwick- 
shire ; and from the time when he published his poems he 
continued to produce an annual supply of plays, each in 
turn revealing its own distinctive beauties, and all, down to 
the last, maintaining an almost uniform level of excellence 
such as one finds in the work of no other author. When 
at last, not later than the year 1612, and probably earlier, 
Shakespeare finally retired from London, it was not to sever 
his connection with the city. He still wrote for the stage 
in the peace of his garden-house at Stratford, and made 
yearly visits to the capital on theatrical business. His later 
plays are redolent not only of the sweetness and sunshine, 
but also of the purity and serenity of the country. Shake- 
speare shared his prosperity with his friends and relatives. 
It is pleasant to know that his parents lived long enough — 
his father till 1601, his mother till 1608 — to rejoice and 
participate in his prosperity. For his father, in 1597, he 
procured the right to use armorial bearings, entitling him to 
rank among the gentry ; and he himself is described in a 
deed of conveyance of the year 1602 as "William Shake- 
speare, gentleman." Meanwhile his children were growing 
up ; and two of them, his eldest child Susannah — said to 
have resembled himself both physically and intellectually — 
and his younger daughter Judith, were well married in 
Stratford, the former in 1607 to John Hall, a local physi- 
cian in good practice, the latter in February, 1616, to Thomas 
Quiney, a wine-merchant in good circumstances. His only 
son Hamnet, the twin-brother of Judith, died in his twelfth 
year. 

Shakespeare left legacies not only to his relatives, but 
also to his professional acquaintances and the poor of Strat- 
ford. There is abundant proof that he was universally 
beloved : he was " gentle Shakespeare " among his friends, 
and he had great personal attractions for winning popular 
favor — a handsome figure, a noble and placid expression 



114 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

of countenance, a frank and kindly manner, and a disposi- 
tion free from envy or jealousy and inclined to help. Yet 
his life was not uncheckered with sorrow^, and his writings 
— and especially his Sonnets — reveal a period of mental 
gloom beginning about the close of the sixteenth century, 
from which, however, whatever its cause, he emerged to 
live a man serenely resigned and at peace with the world 
and himself during the last decade of his life. Ben Jonson's 
testimony of him bears the stamp of truth : " I loved the 
man and do honour to his memory, on this side idolatry, as 
much as any. He was indeed honest, and of an open and 
free nature ; had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and 
gentle expressions, wherein he flowed with such facility 
that sometimes it was necessary to stop him." He died in 
his house at Stratford on the fifty-third anniversary of his 
birth, and was buried in the chancel of Stratford church, 
where on a flat stone over his grave the inscription from 
his own pen may still be read : 

" Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbear 
To dig the dust enclosed here : 
Blest be the man that spares these stones, 
And cursed be he that moves my bones." 

Shakespeare's literary work divides into two classes, 
poems and plays. The poems include Venus and Adonis, 
published in 1593, and Lucrece, published in 1594, both be- 
longing to that voluptuous kind of composition of which 
Marlowe's Hero and Leander is the type ; The Lover^s Com- 
plaint and the collection known as The Passionate Pilgrim, 
both, doubtless, the work of his early youth ; the Sonnets, 
to the number in all of one hundred and fifty-four, writ- 
ten intermittently from perhaps 1592 to 1608 (published 
in 1609), distinguished for their marvellous poetical beau- 
ty both of verse and phrase, and for their dim but un- 
doubted autobiographical interest. The plays number thirty- 
seven, and admit of a popular classification into tragedies, 
comedies, and historical dramas. They were only printed 
in Shakespeare's lifetime surreptitiously, and the folio into 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE II5 

wliicli tliey were first collected was not published till seven 
years after his death. It was a matter of great pecuniary 
importance to the actors to retain Shakespeare's plays in 
MS. None of the MSS. have come down to us. The likeli- 
hood is that the originals perished in the Globe fire in the 
end of 1613. Shakespeare's best tragedies include Romeo 
and Juliet^ Hamlet^ Othello^ King Lear, and Macbeth ; his best 
comedies The Merchant of Venice, A Midsummer - Night'' 8 
Bream, AlVs Well that Ends Well, Much Ado About Nothing, 
The Merry Wives of Windsor, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, 
Measure for Measure, The Winter^s Tale, CymbeUne, and 
The Tempest. The historical dramas consist of King Henry 
VI. (in three parts), King Richard III., King John, King 
Richard II., King Henry IV. (in two parts), King Henry 
v., and King Henry VIII. These are English, and the 
order here followed is the probable order of composition. 
There are also the classical historical dramas of Julius 
Ccesar and Antony and Cleopatra. 

It is impossible in brief space to do justice to the style 
of Shakespeare. He has twenty styles, and is master of 
them all. There is no feeling, fancy, or thought possible 
to human nature which he has not expressed, and expressed 
in such a way as cannot be amended. There is no type of 
character he has not portrayed, and he has portrayed all 
with a vividness that comes up to the actual life. He has 
sounded all the depths and shoals of passion. Shakespeare 
has been called " the universal expresser." 

"When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state, 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, 
And look upon myself, and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, 
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least ; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, 
Haply I think on thee ; and then my state- 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate : — 



116 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-lOGO 

For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings, 
That then I scorn to change my state with kings." 

— Sonnet xxix. 

"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past, 
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 
And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste : 
Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 
For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, 
And weep afresh love's long-since-cancelled woe, 
And moan the expense of many a vanished sight ; 
Then can I grieve at grievances fore-gone, 
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 
Which I new pay as if not paid before. 

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, 
All losses are restored, and sorrows end." 

— Sonnet xxx. 



'That time of year thou may'st in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, 
Bare, ruined clioirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
In me thou seest the twilight of such day. 
As after sunset fadetli in the west, 
Which by and by black night doth take away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie, 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire, 
Consumed with that which it was nourished by. 
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong. 
To love that well which thou must leave ere long." 

— Sonnet Ixxiii. 

"From you have I been absent in the spring. 
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, 
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing ; 
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him. 
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell 
Of different flowers in odour and in hue. 
Could make me any summer's story tell. 
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew : 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE ll7 

Nor did I wonder at the lilies white, 
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose ; 
They were but sweet, but figures of delight, 
Drawn after you ; you pattern of all those. 
Yet seemed it winter still, and, you away. 
As with your shadow I with these did play." 

— Sonnet xcviii. 

" Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds. 
Or bends with the remover to remove : 
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, 
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken ; 
It is the star to every wandering bark. 
Whose worth's unknown, althougli his height be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come : 
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks. 
But bears it out e'en to the edge of doom. 

If this be error, and upon me proved, 

I never writ, nor no man ever loved." 

— Sonnet cxm. 

[It is impossible to do justice to Shakespeare's dramatic poetry 
by extracts — fortunately he is generally well known ; yet a few 
suggested references may be offered, such as the ghost scene in 
Hamlet, the murder scene in Macbeth, the quarrel scene in Julius 
Ccesar, the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice, the scene be- 
tween Hotspur and Glendower in 1 King Henry IV., the forest 
scenes in As Ton Like It, the shepherds' festival scene in The Win- 
ter's Tale.] 

Like that of Dryden, the family of Ben Jonson (1573- 
1637) belonged originally to the Scottish border. His fa- 
ther, a minister of the reformed doctrine, dying a few weeks 
before his birth, his mother married again when Ben was a 
child of two years old, and his step-father, a master brick- 
layer in London, having no ambition beyond his own trade, 
the boy was in danger of growing up uneducated, when Will- 
iam Camden, the famous scholar, and at that time one of 
the masters of Westminster School, undertook and at his own 
expense carried through the education of the lad till he was 



218 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

about sixteen. When he left school, a proficient in classical 
literature, he was put to the trade of bricklaying, from which 
he revolted and went as a volunteer to Flanders to fight 
against Spanish tyranny. As a soldier he bravely distin- 
guished himself in single combat during a battle, despatch- 
ing his adversary in the face of the opposing armies. He 
was only nineteen when he returned to London. His next 
part was that of a poor student at Cambridge, but he soon 
gravitated towards the theatre, first as an actor, then as a 
playwright. For the profession of acting he had little nat- 
ural talent, less than Shakespeare, but as a dramatist he 
soon made his mark, and rose to an eminence inferior only 
to that of Shakespeare. 

His drama was, however, different in kind from that of 
Shakespeare. Shakespeare's object, or at least his achieve- 
ment, was the representation of the whole range of human 
life ; Jonson, again, aimed at a correction rather than a re- 
flection of the manners of his age, and generally by a clas- 
sical style of expression and due observance of the dramatic 
unities. He was a learned artist elaborating types and 
qualities, rather than a spontaneous genius creating persons 
and characters. In comedy Jonson was a satirical drama- 
tist of the peculiarities of his age, and his watchword was re- 
form ; Shakespeare v/as a genial dramatist of human nature 
as it always is, and his primary object was not to point a 
moral, but to please. Shakespeare's popularity, therefore, like 
the scope of his work, is for all time, while Jonson's popu- 
larity was only for the age whose humors he satirized. 

Rivals though they were by different dramatic methods 
for popularity, Shakespeare and Jonson were fast friends ; 
and though Jonson in an occasional outburst of splenetic 
humor sought to check an undiscerning admiration for 
Shakespeare, yet no one — not even Milton or Dryden — ever 
pronounced upon him so noble a eulogy. There were per- 
sonal reasons for Jonson's gratitude to Shakespeare. On the 
reproduction in 1598 of Every Man in his Humour, Jonson's 
first comedy (written two years before), Shakespeare wel- 
comed it to Blackfriars', and himself filled one of the parts 



BEN JONSON 119 

in the representation. It was a good opening, which unfort- 
unately for his own peace Jonson did not follow up. A 
trilogy of strongly satirical comedies came next, which 
roused a feeling of resentment against their author from va- 
rious quarters. Every Man out of his Humour, in 1599, of- 
fended the citizens; Cynthia's Revels, in 1600, offended the 
court; and The Poetaster, in 1601, offended Dekker and 
Marston, and indeed the whole of his professionat brethren, 
except Shakespeare, who, conscious of his superiority, but 
without showing it, could only have been good-humoredly 
amused at the petulance of Ben. Dekker retorted upon 
Ben with the bantering parody of Satlro-Mastix, and called 
him, with many other scurrilous personalities, a staring Le- 
viathan. Thereupon Jonson sulked and was silent for two 
years, and when he reappeared it was in the new character 
of a writer of tragedy. This was his classical tragedy of Se- 
janus (1603) ; and here again Shakespeare proved his friend- 
ship by taking part in the representation. He had not, how- 
ever, abandoned " the comic muse," though it had " proved 
ominous." It was as a writer of comedy he was to win his 
brightest laurels. In 1605 he brought out Volpone, or the Fox; 
in 1609, Epicene, or the Silent Woman; and, in 1610, The 
Alchemist ; these are Jonson's best dramatic work. His one 
other tragedy came in 1611, the classical drama of Catiline. 
Jonson wrote in all about eighteen plays, of which, besides 
those already named, may be mentioned Bartholomeiu Fair 
(a satire on the Puritans), The Staple of JVeivs, The May. 
netic Lady, The New Inn, and The Tale of a Tub. Milton 
has spoken of Jonson's " learned sock," and whether we re- 
gard his two classical tragedies or his English comedies, the 
adjective is well applied to distinguish his dramatic style ; 
the learning is so apparent that he has not quite escaped the 
charge of pedantry. Yet, in addition to the massive power 
of his solidly constructed dramas, there ran through his gen- 
ius a native vein of graceful and delicate fancy, with which 
he would never have been credited if he had not written cer- 
tain lovely masques and charming lyrics, and the fine frag^ 
ment of The Sad Shepherd. 



120 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

In 1619 he was made poet laureate, and in the same year 
set out on foot on his memorable journey to Scotland. It 
was on this occasion that he paid his visit to Hawthornden 
and " sat in Drummond's classic shade." Latterly Jonson 
fell into ill-health and poverty, and his power declined ; but 
for many years before his death (in 1637) he was — like Dry- 
den, and his namesake of a later generation, the great dicta- 
tor of letters — listened to with admiring loyalty by a coterie 
of young aspirants who wei e proud to constitute " the tribe 
of Ben." Jonson's physical appearance had much to com- 
mend him as a leader of men. In his youth he was tall and 
gaunt ; grim-looking he always was, but in later life he be- 
came enormously stout — he speaks of his "mountain belly 
and his rocky face " — a huge tun of man, wanting only two 
pound to weigh twenty stone. His disposition was essen- 
tially convivial, and his favorite haunt was the Mermaid tav- 
ern, founded by Raleigh. Shakespeare, and indeed all the 
wits of the age, were more or less familiar figures in this 
famous tavern, and here were indulged those glorious wine 
and wit combats which Fuller has described for us, and 
which Herrick plaintively recalled. Jonson lies — or rather 
stands, for he was buried on his feet — in Westminster Ab- 
bey, with the simple epitaph, " O rare Ben Jonson," to mark 

the place. 

"Drink to me only with thine eyes, 
And I will pledge with mine; 
Or leave a kiss but in the cup, 

And I'll not look for wine. 
The thirst that from the soul doth rise, 

Doth ask a drink divine ; 
But might I of Jove's nectar sup, 
I would not change from thine. 

"1 sent thee late a rosy wreath, 

Not so much honouring thee. 
As giving it a hope that there 

It could not withered be. 
But thou thereon didst only breathe. 

And sent'st it back to me ; 
Since when it grows, and smells, I swear, 

Not of itself, but thee." _^^ ^^^.^_ 



BEN JONSON 121 

"It is not growing lilie a tree 
In bullv, doth make man better be, 
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, 
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear. 
A lily of a day 
Is fairer far, in May, 
Although it fall and die that night. 
It was the plant and flower of light! 
In small proportions we just beauties see : 
And in short measures life may perfect be." 

— Good Life, Long Life. 

"Underneath this sable hearse 
Lies the subject of all verse, 
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother ; 
Death ! ere thou hast slain another. 
Learned, and fair, and good as she. 
Time shall throw a dart at thee." 

— Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke. 

" Soul of the age ! 
The applause, delight, the wonder of our stage ! 
My Shakespeare, rise ! I will not lodge thee by 
Chaucer, or Spenser, or bid Beaumont lie 
A little further off, to make thee room : 
Thou art a monument without a tomb, 
And art alive still, while thy book doth live, 
And we have wits to read, and praise to give. 
That I not mix thee so, my brain excuses, 
I mean with great but disproportioned Muses : 
For if I thought my judgment were of years, 
I should commit thee surely with thy peers. 
And tell how far thou didst our Lyly outshine, 
Or sporting Kyd or Marlowe's mighty line. 
And though thou had small Latin and less Greek, 
From thence to honour thee I will not seek 
For names ; but call forth thund'ring ^Eschylus, 
Euripides, and Sophocles to us, 
Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead. 
To live again, to hear thy buskin tread, 
And shake a stage : or when thy socks were on, 
Leave thee alone for the comparison 
Of all that insolent Greece or liaughty Rome 
Sent forth, or since did from their ashes come. 
Triumph, my Britain, thou hast one to show, 
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 



122 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-16C0 

He was not of an age, but for all time ! 

And all the Muses still were in their prime, 

When, like Apollo, he came forth to warm 

Our ears, or like a Mercury, to charm ! 

Nature herself was proud of his designs, 

And joyed to wear the dressing of his lines ! 

Which were so richly spun, and woven so fit, 

As, since, she will vouchsafe no other wit. . . . 

Yet must I not give nature all ; thine art. 

My gentle Shakespeare, must enjoy a part. 

For though the poet's matter nature be, 

His art doth give the fashion ; and, that he 

Who casts to write a living line, must sweat — 

Such as thine are — and strike the second heat 

Upon the Muses' anvil ; turn the same. 

And himself with it, that he thinks to frame ; 

Or for the laurel, he may gain a scorn ; 

For a good poet's made as well as born. 

And such wert thou ! Look how the father's face 

Lives in his issue, even so the race 

Of Shakespeare's mind and manners brightly shines 

In his well-turned and true filed lines : 

In each of which he seems to shake a lance, 

As brandished at the eyes of ignorance. 

Sweet Swan of Avon ! what a sight it were 

To see thee in our water yet appear. 

And make those flights upon the banks of Thames 

That so did take Eliza and our James !" 

— To the Memory of Sliakespeare. 

OTHER DRAMATISTS 

George Chapman (1557-1634), an Oxford scholar, and the friend — 
almost the rival — of Ben Jonson, with whom and others he some- 
times collaborated, wrote, in whole or in part. All Fools, Eastward 
Ho ! The May Day, The Widoic's Tears, and other plays ; contin- 
ued, not unsuccessfully, Marlowe's unfinished poem of Uero and 
Leander ; and, best of all, translated Homer, the Iliad in 1610-11, 
and the Odyssey 1614-15— the former in stately rhyming lines of 
fourteen syllables, the latter in the heroic couplet. It is still al- 
lowed to be nearest to the original in melody, in spirit, and in sim- 
ple direct force of any translation of Homer whatever. 

Robert Greene (1560-1592), a Cambridge graduate, led a wild, 
licentious life, both on the Continent and in London, deserted his 
wife, and died of a debauch. He wrote plays, some pretty songs, 



OTHER DRAMATISTS 



123 



and a great quantity of prose. His best play is The History of 
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Greene's prose shows the strong 
influence of Lyly's Euphues in his romances ; in his tracts he 
writes without affectation, in a plain, direct style, his opiuions on 
the matters of his day. Chief among those personal tracts are his 
Repentance and his GroaVs Worth of Wit, in the latter of which 
he attacks the rising fame of Shakespeare, calling him a Joannes 
Factotum, a Shakescene, and an upstart crow beautified with 
stolen feathers. 

Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), closing a brilliant dramatic 
career which achieved great things and promised great things, 
died tragically, after a brief manhood of godlessness perhaps, of 
unbridled debauchery certainly. He was born, the son of a shoe- 
maker, at Canterbury, was educated at Cambridge, and took at 
once, as if by instinct, to the London theatre. He met his death 
in a tavern scuffle at Deptford. A vulgar quarrel sprang up between 
him and one Francis Archer, a serving-man, and Archer, in self- 
defence, accidentally stabbed him with his own dagger. His great 
w^orks are Tamburlaine, Doctor Faustus, The Jeio of Malta, and a 
historical drama, Edward the Second. These are powerful but 
irregular tragedies, exhibiting the operation of consuming pas- 
sions, and strongly arousing in the reader the emotions of horror, 
terror, and pity. Marlowe has been praised for his mighty line ; 
and there can be no doubt that he first developed the capabilities 
of blank- verse. His influence is visible in several ways on the 
genius of Shakespeare ; it may be seen in the construction of 
Shakespeare's tragic verse, in the conception of Shylock, and in 
the magnificent series of his historical plays. Scarcely, if at all, 
inferior to his dramatic power was Marlowe's art as a descriptive 
and narrative poet. His unfinished Hero and Leander is full of 
a sensuous beauty. Marlowe's death left the empire of the stage 
open to Shakespeare. 

Tw^o powerful tragedies by John Webster, who was flourishing 
at the close of the sixteenth century, and of whom little personal 
is known — Vittoria Gorrombona ; or, The White Deul, and The 
Duchess of Malfi — cannot be passed unnoticed. The former is the 
more sublime and perfect Avork ; but both contain, besides abun- 
dance of tragic horrors, many true poetical touches. 

John Fletcher (1576-1625) and Francis Beaumont (1586-1615), 
usually associated together as Beaumont and Fletcher, were gen- 
tlemen by birth as well as by education. Fletcher, a Cambridge 
man, was a son of the Bishop of London ; while Beaumont, who 
was educated at Oxford, was the son of a chief -justice. They 
produced a very great number of plays— about fifty— one-third of 
which, including the two best, they wrote in collaboration. The 



124 THE FOURTH PEKIOD, 1580-1660 

two referred to are Tlie Maid's Tragedy and PJdlaster. Judges are 
mostly agreed that Fletcher was mainly the inventive or creating, 
and Beaumont mainly the critical and correcting, partner. They 
took Shakespeare as their guide rather than Ben Jonson, and so 
belong to the romantic and not to the classical school of English 
drama. Their merits are many, the chief being their skill in 
dramatic construction, their ease in dialogue, the many fine poet- 
ical passages and lyrical gems which they introduce, and their 
power of comic characterization and situation. Their chief fail- 
ing is a want of heroic passion, a tendency to commonplace, and, 
perhaps, a weakening of the blank-verse, at least for tragedy, by 
the common use of feminine endings ; and their great fault is im- 
morality of scene or plot, and indecency of language. To these, 
the only "gentlemen" dramatists of their time, a low^ering of the 
moral standard of the Elizabethan drama is distinctly to be 
charged. It may be said in mitigation of this offence against 
decency, that they only reflected the morals of their age ; the 
standard was higher in the reign of Elizabeth than in that of 
James I. Among their best plays, besides the two already named, 
the following may be included : The Scornful Lady^ The Beggar's 
Bush, The Humorous Lieutenant, The Faithful Shepherdess, the 
last-named a pastoral (by Fletcher alone) of the class of Jonson's 
Sad Shepherd and Milton's Comus ; the tragedies of Valentinian, 
The False One, Bonduca, and Thierry and Theodoret ; and the come- 
dies of The Little French Lawyer, The Coxcomb, and The Knight of 
the Burning Pestle. The Two Noble Kinsmen, usually given to 
Fletcher, is generally allowed to contain traces in language, if not 
in plot or character, of the great pen of Shakespeare. On the other 
hand, well-known passages in Shakespeare's Henry VLII. are be- 
lieved to show traces of the art of Fletcher. 

Philip Massinger (1584-1639), in spite of his coarse language, 
must be regarded in his characterizations as a dramatic moralist. 
He wrote during the last twenty years of his life nearly forty 
plays, half of which are lost. He collaborated with other w^riters. 
The chief of his plays are The Virgin Martyr, The City Madam, 
and A New Way to Pay Old Debts. The last-named contains the 
powerfully-drawn character of Sir Giles Overreach, upon the out- 
witting of whose greed the plot turns. Massinger's verse is strong 
and harmonious, and rises naturally with the subject. His come- 
dies, without being dull, are deficient in fun, and his humor is of 
the grim, almost tragic, cast. He was a scholar of Oxford, but 
little is known of his life, and he died in such obscurity that he 
was buried as "a stranger," though possibly the entry in the 
burial-register at St. Saviour's, South wark, only means that he was 
not a native of the parish. 



FRANCIS BACON, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS 125 

James Shirley (1594-1666) is the last of the great Elizabethan line 
of dramatists. After him come Davenant aud Dry den, who be- 
long to quite another school. He was a native of London, and 
educated at Merchant Taylors' and both Oxford and Cambridge. 
He became a clergyman, but spent most of his time as a school- 
master both before and after the closing of the theatres (in 1643), 
with a brief interlude of soldiering in the Royalist ranks. He was 
driven from his house by the Great Fire, and died shortly after- 
wards on the same day as his wife. He wrote a great deal, and at 
about the same respectable but never-commanding level. Proba- 
bly his best pieces are The Lady of Pleasure and a tragedy named 
The Traitor. 



PROSE WRITERS 

Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626) — better 
known by his popular title of Lord Bacon — was the young- 
est son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, lord keeper, and nephew of 
Lord Burleigh, lord treasurer of England. He was born 
in London, educated at home, probably under the care of 
his mother, one of the most learned women of her time, and 
sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, in his twelfth year. 
There he continued only three years, being dissatisfied with 
the course and methods of study. He now turned his at- 
tention to the legal profession, and, becoming a student of 
Gray's Inn, was called to the bar at the age of twenty-one. 
He had previously spent about three years in France, from 
which country he returned to England on the unexpected 
death of his father. As his uncle, for some unexplained 
reason, refused to help him, lie was thrown on his own re- 
sources, and, combining great legal acumen with oratorical 
ability, he soon began to make his mark in Parliament, 
which he had entered in 1584. He offended the queen by 
a speech in opposition to the government, and when the 
attorney - generalship fell vacant, though Bacon's claim to 
the office was supported by the Earl of Essex, the post was 
bestowed upon Coke. Thereupon Essex generously pre- 
sented him with a small estate of the value of £1800. 

Bacon has been accused of ingratitude to Essex, but the 
charge as formulated by Pope, that, for this and later of- 



126 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

fences which have been preferred against him, he was " the 
meanest of mankind," has been too readily indorsed by the 
popular judgment. It is certain that when Essex, by his 
own headstrong imprudence, fell into disgrace and danger, 
Bacon did all he could to save him; and it is equally certain 
that if he had not been commanded to draw up a statement 
of the treasonable practices of Essex, with which the queen 
sought to justify the earl's execution for attempted rebellion 
in 1601, he would not have done so of his own accord; as 
it was, his Declaration of the Treasons of Essex failed, from 
its leniency, to satisfy Elizabeth ; and Bacon's Apology for 
writing the Declaration amply clears him of the accusation 
of ingratitude. 

It was not till the reign of James I. that Bacon began to 
rise to a high position of political and professional influence. 
In 1603 he was knighted. In 1605 he published, with a 
dedication to the king, his famous Advancement of Learning ; 
he had previously published, in 1597, the first edition of his 
Essays. Even under James, Bacon's rise was at first very 
slow. Solicitor-general in 1607, he became at last (1613) 
attorney-general, on the promotion, which he himself had 
advised, of his rival Coke to a judgeship. In 1616 Coke, 
who had taken the popular side against the king, was dis- 
missed from office, and Bacon rose on the downfall of 
Coke. In 1617 he became lord keeper, in 1618 he was 
created Baron Verulam and appointed lord chancellor of 
England, and in 1621 he was raised to the peerage, with the 
title of Viscount St. Albans. Meantime his reputation as a 
philosopher who had discovered a Novum Organum for 
scientific research was spreading. Yet it was in the year of 
his greatest power and eminence that he fell. The cause of 
it was undoubtedly the personal envy and hatred of Coke. 
The charge brought against him was that of taking bribes 
for the perversion of justice. Bacon acknowledged the ac- 
ceptance of presents from litigants, but denied that he had at 
any time let it influence his decisions. There is absolutely no 
reason to doubt his denial. And this may be said in pallia- 
tion of his admitted guilt, that in accepting presents from 



FRANCIS BACON, VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS 127 

suitors at liis tribunal, lie was doing no more than his pred- 
ecessors in office had been in the practice of doing. Bacon 
had an unusually strong temptation to continue the impru- 
dent, if not iniquitous, practice, in the circumstance that he 
was a poor man involved inextricably in debt, and at the 
same time, from his luxurious nature, utterly incapable of 
economy. He was declared guilty, deposed, fined, and im- 
prisoned. The imprisonment was only nominal — two or 
three days in the Tower — the fine was cancelled, and Bacon 
was forgiven ; but he was banished from London and the 
court. He made a wise use of his compulsory retirement 
from public life, but seems to have had good reason, in his 
retention of the king's favor, to cherish the hope of com- 
plete restoration. In the meanwhile he gave his attention 
to philosophical and literary work. And it was his devotion 
to science that at last and quite unexpectedly brought his 
life to a premature close. One wintry day in March, 1626, 
when out driving, he caught a deadly chill by experimenting 
with snow upon the carcass of a fowl. The illness came 
upon him so suddenly that his coachman, in alarm, drove 
him to the nearest convenient house, which happened to be 
Lord Arundel's, and there, in a few days, he died of feverish 
cold. 

Bacon's works are partly in Latin and partly in English. 
Of the English language as a medium of thought he had a 
poor opinion, which the language has avenged, for it is only 
his English works that are now read. He wrote in Latin 
that he might reach beyond provincial England to the ears 
of Continental scholars. His English works consist of The 
Advancement of Learning^ 1605 ; miscellaneous Essmjs, num- 
bering in the enlarged edition of 1625 fifty-eight in all ; and 
a Historij of Henry VII., published 1622. Bacon's style 
in these works is clear, picturesque, and pithy. The Essays 
deal with very various subjects, but all have the attraction 
of being connected with human nature. The expression 
could not be more condensed if the author had been trying 
to pack as much matter as possible into the smallest possi- 
ble space. The collection is an endless storehouse of sug- 



128 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

gestive ideas. Bacon's Latin works are mainly two : The 
Neiu Atlantis — a story, like Utopia, of a model common- 
wealth in the Southern seas ; and the Instauratio Magna 
Scientiarum (the Great Instauration of the Sciences). This 
great philosophic work was left incomplete by its author. 
Its divisions are given, and the scope of the whole is in- 
dicated. The divisions are: 1, De Augmentis Scientiarum 
(an enlargement of his English treatise The Advancement of 
Learning) ; 2, Novum Organum ; 3, Sylva Sylvarum ; 4, 
Scala Intellectus ; 5, Prodromi ; and 6, Philosophia Secun- 
da. In the first part or section of the work the field of 
knowledge is surveyed and laid out. In the second the new 
method for the attainment of knowledge is unfolded — the 
method of Induction, proceeding on the two principles of 
observation and experiment. In the third some materials 
and facts from the phenomena of nature are brought to- 
gether for the new method to operate upon. In the fourth 
the art or operation of induction, which is the essential part 
of the new method, is illustrated. In the fifth a foretaste or 
specimen anticipations of the New Philosophy are given. 
The sixth part is merely named. 

The Chrysostora of England, and more " golden-mouthed " 
than John of Antioch, being indeed the most eloquent of 
divines of any age or country, Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667) 
was born of humble parents in Cambridge, educated as a 
sizar at Caius College in that university town from his thir- 
teenth to his twentieth year, and on entering the Church, for 
which his natural piety and charity fitted him no less than 
his learning and eloquence, had the good-fortune to come 
under the notice of Archbishop Laud — the steady patron of 
learning and piety — and was by that prelate recommended 
to an Oxford fellowship, and presented to the living of Up- 
pingham. Here Taylor had not been settled more than 
seven years when the civil war began, and he was driven 
from his rural rectory by the Puritans of Rutlandshire, with 
whom in politics he had no sympathy. He became a chap- 
lain in the king's army, and continued in that wandering 



JEREMY TAYLOR— OTHER PROSE WRITERS 129 

office until the defeat at Naseby, in 1645, destroyed the last 
hopes of the Royalists. He suffered imprisonment, not once 
only, in the king's cause ; but for the thirteen years which 
preceded the Restoration he lived a free, happy, and busy 
life in an obscure Welsh village, where he kept school, mar- 
ried a small heiress, and wrote nearly all his books, and cer- 
tainly his best ones. In 1660 he was appointed to the Irish 
bishopric of Down and Connor, but the see became "a place 
of torment" to him from the unrelenting opposition which 
the Ulster Presbyterians offered to his spiritual views and 
claims. He retained the dignity, however, till his death in 
1667. 

Taylor's works include his Life of Christ, a course of 
sermons entitled Golden Grove, and his famous and ever- 
popular Holy Living and Holy Dying. His style is singular- 
ly rich and ornate, continually lit up with illustrative simi- 
les, which are often poems in miniature. The sentences are 
often loose and illogically connected, and his mannerism of 
" So have I seen " in introducing a comparison is a common 
flaw on the surface of pure and exalted eloquence. He has 
been called "the Shakespeare of prose " and " the Spenser of 
divinity " ; all agree that he is one of the greatest prose 
writers of our country. 

OTHER PROSE WRITERS 

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), as courtier, soldier, statesman, 
sailor, navigator, discoverer, and colonizer, belongs to history ; 
as historian and poet, to literature. His chief prose work is a 
History of the World, written while he lay for tw^elve years (1603- 
1615) prisoner in the Tower. The History begins with the crea- 
tion, and is brought down to the fall of the Macedonian empire 
about 170 B.C. Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that 
the " best wits in England were employed in making his His- 
tory," and that he, Ben, himself had contributed a piece on the 
Punic wars, which Raleigh " altered and set in his book." There 
can be little doubt that the History was largely a compilation ; but 
if the preface was from his pen, wiiicli can hardly be denied, the 
noblest passages were clearly the w^ork of Raleigh. 

Richard Hooker (1553-1600) was one of the earliest and one of 
the three or four greatest prose writers of the period. The story 



130 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

of his life has been pleasantly told by Izaak Walton. He belonged 
to Exeter, the studious son of poor parents, was sent to Oxford 
by Jewel, Bishop of Salisbury, and greatly distinguished himself 
there as a scholar in almost every branch of study. His piety 
was as conspicuous as his learning ; yet he was, all through life, 
the most modest and submissive of men. He entered the Church, 
and shortly afterwards was entrapped, with the bait of being made 
more comfortable, into marrying his landlady's daughter, with 
whom, " for she was a silly woman and a mere Xantippe," he led 
anything but a comfortable life. When he was trying to enter- 
tain some distinguished friends in his humble rectory, she called 
him away to rock the cradle. It was by the offices of these friends 
that he was promoted to the Mastership of the Temple in London. 
With his colleague at the Temple he found it impossible to get on 
amicably, and resigned the appointment to accept a country rec- 
tory in Wiltshire, on the ground that "God and Nature did not 
intend him for contentions, but for study and quietness." Here 
be wrote the first part of his great work. The Ecclesiastical Polity. 
In 1595 the queen presented him to the living of Bishop's Bourne, 
in Kent, where he completed his congenial task in comparative 
comfort. His book is an explanation and defence of the system of 
the English Church ; the argument is clearly expressed and closely 
urged on broad principles, and with such candor and moderation 
as to have procured for the author the designation of Judicious. 
The language is always dignified, equally free from vulgarity in 
its idiomatic ease and from pedantry in its fulness of learning. 

John Lyly, born about ten years before Shakespeare, and edu- 
cated at Oxford, is lost among the minor dramatists of the time, 
but is still remembered for his lyrics of Cupid and Gampaspe and 
The Fairies, and more especially for his prose work, in which he 
introduced a new and exceedingly odd style of writing, named 
from a word of his own invention. Euphuism. The work, which 
is a kind of dull Italian love-story, consists of two parts — Euphues, 
the Anatomy of Wit, and Euphues and his England — written when 
Lyly was about twenty-five. The style is the remarkable thing 
about this early novel; it is affected in the last degree, the object 
being to invent a sort of English removed from the common 
speech, which should be set apart as the vehicle of literature. 
The idea had already begun in France among the " rhetoricians " 
when Lyly made his attempt in English. Its twin features are an- 
tithesis and simile; and these tricks of speech occur in every sen- 
tence, producing a peculiarly stilted and tedious effect. Yet the 
fashion of Euphuism lasted half a century. Sidney felt it, though 
he did not entirely give way to it. Shakespeare satirized it. 
Scott's representation of it in The Monastery is far from a correct 



OTHER PROSE WRITERS 131 

imitation. Among Lyly's nine or ten plays may be mentioned 
Endymion and The Maid's Metamorphosis. 

Eobert Burton (1576-1639), the author of The Anatomy of Mel- 
ancholy, a book written leisurely during many studious years, 
packed full of quaint quotations and information on an infinite 
variety of subjects, and purporting to expound the nature, causes, 
symptoms, effects, and cure of melancholy, spent the last forty 
years of his life more or less continuously at Christ Church Col- 
lege, Oxford, nursing his hypochondria, and enjoying various liv- 
ings, to which he gave the prescribed minimum of his attention. 

Izaak Walton (1593-1683), the ever-fresh and popular author 
of The Compleat Angler, and the pleasant biographer of several 
eminent clergymen, lived ninety years, and enjoyed life to the 
last. He was a man of a singularly cheerful, equable, and peace- 
loving temperament, who left London, where he carried on an 
easy, successful business as a linen-draper, in order to avoid the 
confusion of the Civil War and indulge his favorite pastime with 
unmolested mind. The charm of his book lies in the revelation 
of the writer's own personality, and the glimpses of rural scenery 
and rustic life which, for the most part incidentally, light up the 
pages. 

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was the son of a London mer- 
chant, and educated at Oxford. He travelled abroad, and studied 
medicine at Leyden ; then, taking up the profession of a doctor, 
without the need of earning a livelihood, settled at Norwich, and 
acquired a great reputation for science. He was one of the early 
Fellows of the Royal Society, and received knighthood from Charles 
II. in 1662. He wrote Religio Medici before he was thirt}^; his other 
learned works include Hydriotaphia or Urn-Burial, his master- 
piece; The Garden of Cyrus, and an Enquiry into Vulgar Errors. 
The Vrn- Burial, called forth by the discovery of forty or fifty 
sepulchral urns in a field in Norfolkshire, is in substance an elo- 
quent monologue on the earth as a vast charnel- field, and the 
vanity of human ambition. The book was a great favorite with 
Charles Lamb. The style is marked by Latinisms ; and Browne, 
whom Johnson edited in his younger days, is blamed for the pon- 
derosity of Johnson. The Vulgar Errors volume is the most pop- 
ular of his books, from its full and quaint discussion of such pop- 
ular superstitions as the belief that the forbidden fruit was an 
apple, that there was no rainbow before the Flood, that one is 
heavier before taking food than after, that to meet a wolf and be 
first seen by it begets dumbness, and such curious questions as 
pigmies, the horned Moses, the black skins of negroes, and the 
Eastern practice of saluting a man when he sneezes. 

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661), a native, like Dryden twenty-three 



132 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-16G0 

years after him, of Aldvvinkle in Northamptonshire, was educated 
for the Church at Cambridge, and rose rapidly in his profession. 
On the outbreak of civil war he cast in liis lot with the Royalists, 
and as regimental chaplain led a wandering life, which he utilized 
by the personal collection of local facts and traditions for his 
great work. The Worthies of England. Nothing pleased him bet- 
ter than a gossip with the oldest inhabitant of some historical vil- 
lage, unless it was to reproduce from his wizard memory, but in 
his own quaintly picturesque and witty style, the information he 
had thus obtained. The bent of his mind was to history and biog- 
raphy. So early as 1640 he had already published his History of 
the Holy War. It was followed sixteen years later, when the Civil 
War was over, and he was once more settled in London, b}'' his 
Ghurcli History of Britain. The Worthies of England was his last 
and great work, not published till the year after his death. It is 
an extraordinary collection, almost encyclopaedian, of the antiqui- 
ties, traditions, and proverbial philosophy, the histories of not- 
able persons and famous places, of the various counties of Eng- 
land, described in a strain of lively wit and humor, in which 
picturesque similes and jocular anecdotes are forever alternating. 
Hudibras is hardly fuller of fanciful images and pithy phrases 
than the works of Fuller. His one great object in composition 
seems to have been to present his idea wittily. But beneath all 
his jocularity there is a large fund of good-sense and sagacity, 
combined with sincerity, piety, and benevolence. His descrip- 
tion, for example, of negroes as "God's images cut in ebony" is 
not less kindly conceived than it is quaintly expressed. He wrote 
also on theological subjects in the same style ; such are his trea- 
tises on The Holy and Profane State and A Pisgah- Sight of Pales- 
tine. 

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1680) to the greatest physical timidity 
united the utmost intellectual daring. He was born at Malmes- 
bury in the Armada year, educated at Oxford, and after long 
travelling and living abroad, acting as tutor and secretary to 
royal and aristocratic persons, and enjoying the friendship or hos- 
tility of some of the most eminent thinkei's and scholars of his 
time, died at the great age of ninety-two, within eight years of the 
Revolution. In 1610 he was tutor to the future Earl of Devon- 
shire, and maintained his connection in one capacity or another, 
off and on, with the Cavendish family for about seventy years. 
But in 1647 he also acted as tutor to the Prince of Wales, after- 
wards Charles II, Among his associates were Bacon, Ben Jon- 
son, Descartes, Galileo, Lord Herbert, Selden, Cowley, Harvey, 
etc. ; and he is memorable for his disputation with Bishop Bram- 
hall on a question of metaphysics, and with Wallis, the Oxford 



OTHER PROSE WRITERS I33 

professor, on a question of mathematics. He read little — lie used 
to say that if he had read as much as others he would have been 
as ignorant; but he thought vigorously, and what he thought 
vigorously he expressed vigorously. There is no beating about 
the bush with Hobbes ; he is clear and direct — believes (like 
Swift) in nouns and verbs, and hardly ever waits for the orna- 
ment of an adjective. No man had ever more confidence in his 
opinions or showed more courage in disclosing them than Hobbes. 
His great works bear the fanciful titles of Leviathan and Behe- 
moth. He also wrote a treatise on Human Nature, and he trans- 
lated Homer into hard, unpoetical English quatrains, in the style 
of his friend Davenant's Oondibert. Behemoth is a history of the 
Civil War from 1640 to 1660. His masterpiece is Leviathan, and 
its publication, besides provoking his political opponents, raised 
against him the cry of "Atheist !" His principal position, which 
he occupies and defends with great force and candor of speech 
and argument, may be briefly stated. He traces the practice of 
morality to its origin in a prudent selfishness ; friendship is mere- 
ly a sense of mutual utility; the religious sentiment originates in 
a fear of invisible powers ; mankind are not free agents, but sub- 
ject to a law of necessity; they are by nature ferocious, and they 
contracted covenants with each other for the formation of com- 
munities that they might protect and defend each other. Thus 
was created "that great Leviathan called the Commonwealth or 
State, which is but an artificial mnn, though of greater stature 
and strength that the natural, for whose protection and defence 
it was intended." From this idea of the formation of a State 
comes his view of monarchy. The community resigned all rights 
into the hands of one ruler; they gave him the power, and it was 
given for the sole end of the common weal; he represented all, 
and he was necessarily despotic. Locke's view was so far the 
same as Hobbes's — but he retained to the people the right of re- 
sistance if their delegated power was being used for another end 
than that for which it was given. 

Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon (1608-1674), was born and died in 
the same year as Milton. Of a good Cheshire family, he was 
educated at Oxford, trained to the profession of the law, and en- 
tered Parliament in 1640. His political career belongs to history. 
It was while an exile in France during the last seven years of his 
life that he wrote his famous work, TJie Great Rebellion — for so 
the Royalists regarded the opposition of Parliament to the misrule 
of Charles I. The excellences of the work lie in the general fair- 
ness of the history to men like Cromwell, in the lifelike portraits 
with which the narrative abounds, and in the skill and ease of the 
narrative; the great demerit of the style is the incessant use of 



134 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 

long disjointed paragrapli-sentences. Clarendon's style is in this 
respect a contrast to Hobbes's. 

I. A Chronological Table of Authors from 1580 to 1660 

(A) Surviving from last Period 

1527-1605. John Stow, chronicler. 
1536 ?-1608. Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, Earl of Dorset, 
poet. 
1543-1608. John Still, Bishop, dramatist. 

(B) Belonging to the Period 

1551-1623. William Camden, historian. 

1552-1618. Sir AValter Raleigh, historian and poet. 
1552 ?-1599. Edmund Spenser, poet. 

1553-1600. Richard Hooker, theologian, etc. 

1553-1616. Richard Hakluyt, narrator of voyages. 

1554-1586. Sir Philip Sidney, poet and prose writer. 

1554-? John Lyly, dramatist, poet, and prose writer. 
1555-1615 ? Henry Constable, writer of sonnets and miscellaneous 

poems. 
1556 ?-1625 ? Thomas Lodge, dramatist. 

— 1588 — . Thomas Kyd, dramatist. 

1557-1634. George Chapman, dramatist and poet. 

1558-1609. William Warner, narrative poet and prose writer. 

1560-1592. Robert Greene, dramatist. 
1560 ?-1626. Sir John Davies, poet. 
1560 ?-1595. Robert Southwell, poet. 

1561-1612. Sir John Harrington, translator of Ariosto's Orlando 
Furioso. 

— 1600 — . Edward Fairfax, translator of Tasso's Jerusalem De- 
livered. 

1561-1626. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, 
philosopher, historian, essayist. 

1562-1619. Samuel Daniel, poet. 

1563-1631. Michael Drayton, poet. 
1563 ?-1618. Joshua Sylvester, translator of Du Bartas's Divine 
Weeks. 

1564-1593. Christopher Marlowe, dramatist and poet. 

1564-1616. William Shakespeare, dramatist and poet. 

1566-1625. King James I. of England, (Scottish) prose writer. 
1570 ?-1627. Thomas Middleton, dramatist. 

— 1590 — . Thomas Nash, dramatist. 



TABLE OF AUTHORS FROM 1580 TO 1660 135 

— 1607 — . John Webster, dramatist. 

1573-1626. John Donne, satirical poet. 

1573-1637. Ben Johnson, dramatist. 

1574-1656. Joseph Hall, Bishop, satirical poet, and theologian. 
1575 ?-1633. John Marston, dramatist. 

To this lime belong a great many minor drama- 
tists, of whom the chief perhaps are : Thomas 
Dekker, William Rowley, Cyril Tourneur, Thom- 
as Nabbes, and John Day. 

1576-1625. John Fletcher, dramatist and poet. 

1576-1639. Robert Burton, prose writer (xinatomy of Melancholy). 

1578-1644 George Sandys, translator of Ovid, and sacred poet. 

1580-1640. Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling, (Scottish) 
poet. 

1581-1613. Sir Thomas Overbury, writer of character-sketches. 

1583-1648. Lord Herbert of Cherbury, philosopher, etc. 

Also, between 1580 and 1590, the brothers Fletch- 
er, Giles and Phineas, poets, sons of Dr. Giles 
Fletcher, himself a poet of the amatory kind, and 
cousins of John Fletcher, the poet-dramatist who 
collaborated with Beaumont. 

1583-1639. Philip Massinger, dramatist. 

1584-1654. John Selden, scholar, author of Table Talk, etc. 

1585-1649. William Drummond, of Hawthornden, (Scottish) 
poet. 

1586-1615. Francis Beaumont, dramatist. 

1586-? John Ford, dramatist. 

1588-1680. Thomas Hobbes, philosopher. 

1588-1667. George Wither, poet. 

1589-1639. Thomas Carew, poet. 

1590-1650 ? William Browne, poet. 

1592-1644. Francis Quarles, poet. 

1593-1633. George Herbert, poet. 

1593-1683. Izaak Walton, writer on angling, etc. 

1594-1666. James Shirley, dramatist. 

1594-1674. Robert Herrick, poet. 

1601-1665. John Earle, Bishop, writer of character-sketches. 

1605-1682. Sir Thomas Browne, philosopher. 

1608-1642. Sir John Suckling, poet. 

1608-1661. Thomas Fuller, historian, etc. 

1608-1674. Edward Hyde, Lord Clarendon, historian. 

1608-1674. John Milton, poet. 
1613? -1650. Richard Crashaw, poet. 

1613-1658. John Cleveland, satirical poet. 

1613-1667. Jeremy Taylor, theologian. 



136 THE FOURTH PERIOD, 1580-1660 



II. A Chronological List of Works published between 
1580 AND 1660. 

1580. Lyly's Euphues and his England. 

1581. Sir Philip Sidney's Apology for Poetry written — not pub- 

lished till 1595. 

1582. Hakluyt's Voyages (American). 

1586. Camden's Britannia (enlarged in 1607); Warner's Albion's 

England; Marlowe's Faustus perhaps acted. 
1590. Sidney's Arcadia; Spenser's Fat5rie Queene, Books I. -III. 

1593. Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis. 

1594. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Books I. -IV.; Shakespeare's 

Rape of Lucrece ; Southwell's Mary Magdalen's Fu- 
neral Tears ; Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again, 
Epithelamium, etc. 

1596. Davis's Orchestra — a philosophical poem on "dancing"; 

Jonson's Every Man in His Humour acted; Faerie 
Queene, Books IV.-VI. 

1597. Bacon's Essays (ten in this edition); Hall's Virgidemiarum 

(first part) ; Shakespeare's Richard II. and Richard III. 

1598. Chapman's Translation of Iliad, Books I., II., and VII.- 

XI.; Sylvester's "Du Bartas"; Shakespeare's Love's 
Labour's Lost, and Henry IV., Part I. 

1599. Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim, and Romeo and Juliet. 

1600. Fairfax's Tasso ; Shakespeare's Henry IV., Part II., Mid- 

summer-Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, Much Ado 
About Nothing. 

1601. Jonson's Poetaster. 

1602. Hamlet acted. 

1603. Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays; Jonson's Sejanus; 

Hamlet first printed. 

1604. James I.'s Counterblast ; Marlowe's Faustus published. 

1605. Bacon's Advancement of Learning. 

1608. King Lear published. 

1609. Daniel's Civil Wars ; Jonson's Epicene ; Shakespeare's 

Sonnets. 

1610. Chapman's Iliad, I.-XII. (finished next year); John Fletch- 

er's Faithful Shepherdess ; Macbeth acted. 

1611. Winter's Tale acted ; Jonson's Catiline acted; Authorized 

Version of Bible. 

1612. Webster's Vittoria Corrombona printed. 

1613. Browne's Britannia's Pastorals ; Drayton's Polyolbion 

(Part I.) ; Drummond's Cypress Grove ; Wither's Abuses 
Stript and Whipt. 



LIST OF WORKS, 1580-1660 137 

1614. Overbury's Characters ; Raleigh's History of the World. 

1615. Camden's Annals (Part I.). 

1616. Drummond of Hawthornden's Poems ; Webster's Duchess 

of Malli acted. 
1618. Ecclesiastical Polity, Books VI. -VIII. 

1620. Bacon's Novum Oiganum. 

1621. Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 

1622. Polyolbiou (complete) ; Massinger's (or Dekker's ?) Virgin 

Martyr ; Othello printed. 

1623. First Folio edition of Shakespeare's Plays. 

1626. Sandys's Ovid's Metamorphoses. 

1627. Bacon's New Atlantis (translation in 1629) ; Drayton's 

Ballad on Battle of Agincourt. 
1631. Herbert's The Temple. 

1633. Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island; Massinger's New Way 

to Pay Old Debts. 

1634. Comus acted. 

1635. Quarles's Divine Emblems. 

1637. Comus published; Lycidas written. 

1639. Fuller's History of the Holy War. 

1640. Carew's Poems. 

1642. Keligio Medici, by Sir T. Browne ; Denham's Cooper's 

Hill ; Fuller's Holy State. 
1644. Milton's Areopagitica ; Waller's Poems. 
1646. Crashaw's Steps to the Temple. 
1648. Herrick's Hesperides. 

1650, Baxtc r's Saints' Everlasting Rest ; Jeremy Taylor's Holy 

Living. 

1651. Cleveland's Poems ; Hobbes's Leviathan ; Milton's Defen- 

sio pro Populo Anglicano ; Taylor's Holy Dying. 
1653. Walton's Compleat Angler, 
1656. Cowley's Davideis ; Fuller's Church History, 
1658. Dryden's Stanzas on the Death of Cromwell. 
1660, Dryden's Astraea Redux, 



1660-1789 

FEOM THE KESTORATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

The range is over one Lundred and thirty eventful years, 
and extends from the recall of the Stuarts, through the remain- 
ing reigns of that ill-fated dynasty, down to the middle of the 
reign of George III. in the Hanoverian line. The succession 
of sovereigns in the period is as follows : Stuarts — Charles 
II., James IL, William and Mary, Anne ; Guelphs — George 
I., George IL, George III. The chief events of British his- 
tory affecting more or less directly the literary growth of the 
period are here presented as they occurred in the successive 



Eeign of Charles II., 1660-1685.— Establishment of the restored 
Church and State by the enactments of the Clarendon Code. The 
Great Plague, followed by the Great Fire of London, with the 
erection of the Monument. The Dutch in the Thames. Intrigues 
of the Cabal and attempted restoration of Catholicism, followed by 
the Popish Plot. Persecution of the Covenanters in Scotland. 
The Exclusion Bill, strife between Whig and Tory, and the Rye- 
House Plot. 

Keign of James II., 1685-1688. — Monmouth's rebellion, followed 
by the Bloody Assize. Schemes of the king for despotic power 
and the restoration of Catholicism. Persecution in Scotland. Na- 
tional opposition to the king roused by " Lillibullero," the Dec- 



* A useful exercise for the young student would be to go over the his- 
torical summary of the reigns, apportioning to each event whatever 
hterary productions may be connected with it. Ex. gr., the Restoration 
produced Astrcea Redux ; the downfall of Puritan rule, Hudihras ; the 
Great Fire of London, Annus Mirabilis ; the Clarendon Code, The Non- 
juror ; the erection of the Monument, Pope's lines about " the tall 
bully " ; the Exclusion Bill, the attack upon Shaftesbury (Achitophel), 
etc. 



FROM RESTORATION TO FRENCH REVOLUTION 139 

laration of Indulgence, and the Trial of the Bishops. Revo- 

^ote —During these two reigns the population of England and 
Scotland together numbered only about six millions. The 
trade of the country was on the whole in a flourishing con- 
dition. In 1663 the Royal Society was founded; but mthe 
same year the Licensing Act set injurious limits to the free- 
dom of the press. 
Reign of William IIL (Mary joint-sovereign till her death in 1694), 
1688-1702 —The Constitution established on a Protestant basis, and 
supremacy of Parliament secured; followed by the appearance of 
Non-Jurors and Jacobites. Battles of Boyne and Killiecrankie. 
War against Louis XIV. The Glencoe Massacre, and the failure 
of the Darien Scheme. Act of Settlement. » ^ 

Note —During most part of this reign trade was in a languish- 
ing state, owing to the war with France. The Civil List 
was instituted. Peter the Great visited England in 1697 ; 
in the following? year the S.P.C.K. was founded. 
Reign of Anne, 1702-1714.— Protestantism and the Supremacy ot 
Parliament maintained. Marlborough's victories - Blenheim m 
1704. Union of the Scots Parliament with the English m 1707. 
Struggle for place between Whig and Tory. 

Note —In this reign the newspaper press began to be a power 

in the country- The G.P.O. was established m 1^10- ^{ 

foreign contemporary events, the defeat of Charles Xll. ot 

Sweden at Pultowa in 1709 is perhaps the most memorable. 

Reign of George I., 1714-1727. -Protestantism and Parliamentary 

government continued ; the Whigs in power. Opposition of the 

Jacobites-" The Fifteen." The South Sea " Bubble ; followed 

by the long, peaceful, and prosperous administration ot Sir Kob- 

ertWalpole. Wood's " Ha'pence." 

Reign of George II., 1727-1760. -Protestantism and supremacy of 
Parliament continued. The Porteous Riots in Edinbui^h. War 
with Spain ; Anson's great voyage ; fall of Walpole. War of the 
Austrian Succession, and "The Forty-Five." Seven Years War 
with France -victory of Plassy in 1757, capture of Quebec m 

^^Reign of George III., 1760-1789 (continued till 1820). -Protestant- 
ism maintained, but with attempt on the king's part for person- 
al government. Treaty of Paris, and Wilkes's mticism of the 
" Kino-'s Speech." War with the American colonies. Abolition ot 
penal" aws against Catholics, followed by No-Popery Riots and 
(among other acts of vandalism) the burning of Lord Mansfield s 

^^^^^i^'^e.-Trade revived during the first of these three reigns, 



140 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1G60-1789 

and was in an unusually flourishing condition under George 
III., accompanied by a phenomenal rise of towns, a wide, 
various, and rapid extension of manufactures, and numer- 
ous industrial inventions. The tone of morality, which had 
been lowered under George I., gradually improved; the fine 
arts, which had at first been neglected, revived without 
royal patronage. Among great names in art are those of 
Hogarth and Reynolds ; in science, Arkwright and Watt. A 
new system of agriculture came in about 1730. The Oentlc- 
man's Magazine was founded in 1731 ; the first mail-coach 
started in 1784. 

INTRODUCTION 

In a general survey of the literary field of this period 
the most obvious features are the development of the 
prose and the restraint of the verse. Not only does 
prose now for the first time in the history of our litera- 
ture take its due place as a form of literary expression, 
but it even predominates over the verse. One is struck 
at once with its vast amount, its rapid development, 
its high standard of excellence, and the variety of its 
forms. The period, indeed, is the great prose age of 
English literature. The greatest names belong to prose. 
They include Bunyan, Newton, Locke, Congreve, Swift, 
Berkeley, Addison, Lord Shaftesbury, Defoe, Richard- 
son, Fielding, Hume, Smollett, Burke, Johnson, Robert- 
son, Sterne, Goldsmith, Adam Smith, and Gibbon. On 
the other hand, the list of the great verse-writers is lim- 
ited to the names of Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Gray, 
Cowper, and Burns. It is to be noted, too, that some of 
the verse-writers wrote admirable prose. 

The history of the prose-style of the period begins 
with Dryden, and the style develops with surprising ra- 
pidit}^ and wonderful variety all down the course. It 
was already modern before it left the seventeenth cen- 
tury. The long, lumbering sentences, overloaded with 



INTRODUCTION 141 

imagery and choked with parentheses, disappeared. All 
through the period the influence of the French style of 
writing was more or less felt on the manner of English 
prose. This influence first showed itself in the Restora- 
tion age in short, clear, and neatly turned sentences ; the 
clearness and neatness, with added graces, continued to 
the times of Addison and Goldsmith ; Johnson, while 
still retaining the terseness of Dryden, introduced the 
pomp and roll, and a good deal of the heaviness, of the 
Latin style ; and his example was followed by Gibbon 
and Burke — the former, however, lightening his Latin- 
English with imagination, the latter with passion. The 
Scottish writers, Hume, Robertson, Adam Smith, were 
directly under the influence of the French style, and owed 
little or no allegiance to Johnson. The masters of style 
were Dryden, clear, concise, and vigorous ; Temple, 
pleasant and refined ; Swift, cool and trenchant ; Berke- 
ley, lucid and scholarly ; Addison, always charming and 
reposeful ; Johnson, weighty and well-balanced ; Gold- 
smith, graceful and easy ; Gibbon, splendid ; and Burke, 
magnificent. 

Prose was applied to a variety of new literary uses in 
this period. Chief among these were criticism, the 
periodical essay, the novel, and history. Criticism, be- 
gun by Dryden, was continued on the classical side by 
Bentley, on the modern side by Dennis, Addison, Lord 
Shaftesbury, Warton, and Johnson. The periodical es- 
say, unsuccessfully introduced by Defoe in the Review 
newspaper (I'ZOS-l'ZlS), was established by Steele and 
Addison in TJie Tatler (1'709), The Spectator (IVII), and 
The Guardia?! (Ills). Among contributors were Berke- 
ley, Pope, Tickell, Budgell, Hughes. Then came, under 
the editorship of Steele, The JEnglishman, The Lover, 
and The Reader ; while Addison, who had broken with 



142 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Steele, started The Freeholder. But none of these at- 
tained such a success as The Spectator. A generation 
later (1'750-1'752) Johnson carried on The Rambler, but he 
wanted the light and graceful touch of Addison, and his 
readers complained of his long words and his lack of va- 
riety. The Adventurer of John Ha wkes worth (1752-1754) 
came next, with contributions from Johnson and War- 
ton. Just after it came The World (1753-1756), edited by 
Edward Moore (author of The Gamester), with contribu- 
tions from Horace Walpole and Lords Lyttelton and 
Chesterfield ; it was very successful. Alongside of it ran 
George Colman's weekly paper The Connoisseur (1754- 
1756), to which Cowper sent a few lively essays. The 
Bee, edited b}^ Goldsmith, buzzed for six or seven weeks 
in 1759. Last of all the periodical essays came Johnson's 
second venture, The Idler, less gloomy and persistently 
moral than The Rambler, and enlivened with articles by 
Warton and Reynolds; it ran from 1758 to 1760. The 
weeklies now began to be political, and monthly maga- 
zines, admitting essays along with other matter, became 
fashionable ; of these may be mentioned Tlie Monthly Re- 
view, begun in 1749, and The Critical Review, founded 
by Smollett in 1756, both of which were long regarded 
as the leading magazines of their kind. Goldsmith con- 
tributed to the latter ; but his Chinese Letters enriched 
a dailj^. The Public Ledger, ^h\(A\ commenced in 1760. 
The first number of The London Times appeared in 
1788. 

But the great institution of last century Avas the 
novel. The way was prepared for it by Bunyan's Life 
and Death of Mr. B adman (1680), and more especially 
by Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), and Swift's Travels 
of Gulliver (1726). It was not, however, till 1740 that 
the first English novel, properly so called, Richardson's 



INTRODUCTION 



143 



Pamela^ made its appearance. It at once awoke a new 
interest in the reading public, and the novel was rapidly 
developed. Next in time, and at least equal in merit 
to Richardson, is the other great English novelist of 
last century, Henry Fielding, whose Joseph Anch'eics ap- 
peared in 1742. The Scottish novelist, Tobias Smollett, 
only inferior to Fielding in a tendency to caricature, was 
in the field in 1748 with Roderick Random ; wdiile the 
Irishmen, Sterne and Goldsmith, ably maintained the 
credit of their country, the former with Tristram Shan- 
dy (1759), and the latter w^ith The Vicar of Wakefield 
(1766). 

It was so late as the middle of last century that history 
was written in English for the first time with literary 
grace. The great names here are Hume, Robertson, and 
Gibbon — the last the greatest historian England has yet 
produced. 

A great body of theological and philosophical writing 
marks the history of the thought of the period : in the 
earlier part, divines were ranked on the side of Author- 
ity or Reason, according as they thought that the Bible 
or common-sense should be the supreme test of truth. 
The philosophers joined in the controversy. It employed 
the pens of Tillotson, Cudworth, Stillingfleet, Sherlock, 
South, Shaftesbury, Barrow, and Newton ; Berkeley's 
whole system of Idealism was put forth in answer to the 
sceptics ; Clarke and Butler wrote on the side of re- 
vealed religion — the latter, by his Analogy, seeking to 
reconcile reason and revelation ; while Paley endeav- 
ored in his Evidences to defend Christianity from the 
standpoint of common-sense. 

The poetry all through the period is marked by re- 
straint of feeling and correctness of expression. There 
are few or no wild imaginative flights or passionate 



144 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

utterances. A well - defined line marks off the verse of 
Dryden and his followers from that of the preceding 
age. The difference amounts to a contrast. It is all 
the difference between romance and conventional rule, 
between naturalness and artificialit3^ It is to be ex- 
plained by the altered conditions, both political and 
social, of the times. The fervor of the emotional and 
imaginative Elizabethan era had cooled down under the 
restraining forces of Puritanism, which still affected a 
large area of the people after the Restoration ; while 
there was nothing in the history of the country, till we 
come to the Napoleonic wars, to excite a spirit of heroic 
national feeling among those who were opposed to Puri- 
tanism. To correct and to teach were regarded as the 
highest offices of poetry ; and satire and didactic verse 
continued to be written all through the period. The re- 
straint in poetical feeling was accompanied by restraint 
in both the style and the form of its expression. The 
heroic couplet, introduced by Waller, established in the 
popular favor by Dryden, and perfected by Pope, was 
held to be the standard measure for poetry down to and 
even past the time of Goldsmith, who may be said to 
have given it its final touch of grace. Attempts which 
at last succeeded in widening the domain of poetry and 
varying its expression were made early in the eighteenth 
century. First Thomson, and afterwards Gray, made 
the attempt. The former, by the use of blank- verse 
in his Winter, in 1725, set the example to Cowper, and 
Cowper to Wordsworth. At the same time he called 
poetry out of the town into the country, and found in 
external nature subjects directly capable of insjDiring 
poetical ideas. Gray, too, aided in widening the range 
of poetical observation, by including the imagery of ex- 
ternal nature ; but he used natural description only as 



INTRODUCTION I45 

an ornament to his poetry, and never made it the main 
subject. Like Thomson, he avoided the heroic couplet, 
but he was not prepared to abandon rhyme, and sought 
variety of music in the elegiac stanza and various other 
lyrical measures. At exactly the same time that Thom- 
son was creating once more the feeling for nature in 
England, Allan Ramsay was reviving it in Scotland. 
The return to nature went on till the time of Cowper 
and Burns, who, publishing within a year of each other, 
the former his Tash in 1785, the latter his Kilmarnock 
poems in 1786, spread everywhere a love for rural poe- 
try, and prepared the way for Wordsworth. 

It was another than the Elizabethan drama that arose 
in England after the Restoration. The theatres had 
been shut under Puritan rule for nearly twenty years, 
and the art of play-writing had to be learned anew. 
French tastes in matters dramatic were fashionable at 
court. Rhyme was believed to be a fitting adjunct for 
tragedy, and for fourteen years — from 1664 to 1678 — 
the experiment was tried, and finally abandoned. In 
spite of the efforts of Dryden, Otway, Addison, Young, 
and Thomson tragedy never attained to anything like 
the sublimity to which it towered in the Elizabethan age. 
Comedy, however, entered under Congreve and Farqu- 
har upon a new career of wit and humor ; unfortunately 
the undeniable wit and humor of the Orange comedy 
was licentious in the extreme. By-and-by a purer taste 
prevailed, due partly to Jeremy Collier's exposure of the 
immorality of the stage (1698), and partly to the growth 
of a higher tone in society, through the writings of 
Addison. The best remaining comedies after Farquhar, 
himself an Irishman, were written by Irishmen — Steele, 
Goldsmith, and Sheridan. 

A notable feature of the literary life of the period 
10 



146 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

was its connection with politics and the public service. 
The statement is more especially true when said of the 
half -century succeeding the Revolution. Government 
was eager to secure the influence of the pen, and authors 
were eager to give it. Even writers like Thomson 
and Young, who had little natural turn for practical af- 
fairs, were ambitious of serving their country. From 
Dryden to Adam Smith there were few that were not 
engaged directly in political work, or that did not, at 
least, hold some post in the gift of the government of 
the day. The connection is more especially marked in 
the case of the prose writers. Defoe, Steele, Addison, 
Swift, Burke, Gibbon, were all more or less influential 
politicians. Addison, if only for a short time, occupied 
the high position of secretary of state. Others, such as 
Johnson, were content to make incursions into the politi- 
cal field on questions of current interest ; or, like Hume, 
gave their services in diplomatic missions. But even 
the poets were not wholly disconnected from politics 
and political appointments. Prior maintained the dignity 
of an ambassador -in -chief; even Gay served on em- 
bassies ; Congreve held various lucrative posts in the 
public service ; Thomson was surveyor of the Leeward 
Islands. If Young was little recognized by any politi- 
cal party, it was not for lack of seeking recognition. 
Cowper, who, like Gray, was mentioned for the laure- 
ateship, at least enjoyed a government pension. * Pope 
and Goldsmith were the only poets of prominent mark 
who went unrewarded by party ; and Pope's religion dis- 
qualified him from holding a political appointment. Nor 
must we forget Burns, a humble oflicer of excise, who 
had boasted that he was the king's debtor "for neither 
pension, post, nor place." 

Patronage was a great institution in the literary life 



INTRODUCTION 147 

of the period. There were still aristocratic authors — 
the successors of such literary men of high rank as Lord 
Buckhurst, Lord Surrey, and Sir Philip Sidney ; but the 
literary connection of such men as Lord Dorset and 
Lord Halifax, Lord Lyttelton and Lord Chesterfield, 
was rather with authors than authorship. Dryden and 
Prior, Thomson and Young, were firm believers in the 
shadow of a great name ; bat indeed the practice of 
dedicating was universal. It was thought to be as 
necessary for the success of a book to secure a patron 
as a publisher. The connection, whatever advantage it 
may have been to the individual author, was unworthy 
of the profession and degrading to the dignity of litera- 
ture. The bond was happily broken by Goldsmith's 
Dedication to his brother, and Johnson's Letter to Lord 
Chesterfield. It was a novelty in literature when a poor 
poet found a patron in one poorer than himself ; and 
Johnson's definition of a patron came upon the literary 
world like a revelation. "Is not a patron, my lord, one 
who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life 
in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encum- 
bers him with help?" The Letter bears date 1755. 
From that time forward authors began to look to the 
public for patronage, and to trust to their merits as their 
best recommendation. 

The influence of France on English literature is notice- 
able all through the period. On the whole, it was one 
of taste and style rather than of ideas. It commenced 
in a perfectly natural way. France in the time of the 
English Commonwealth was the refuge of the exiled 
Royalists, and it was from France through Holland that 
monarchy was restored to England in 1660. The correct 
style of writing had indeed begun with Waller indepen- 
dently of French influence, but French influence was 



148 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

altogether in favor of the development of that style. 
Traces of Corneille are visible in the pompous and some- 
what bombastic tragedies of Dryden. The comic wit of 
Moliere reappears in Congreve. From Voiture and La- 
fontaine, Prior and Gay caught the art which gives 
grace to the Occasional Poem and ease in the conduct of 
a tale. Pope learned something from the critical keen- 
ness of Boileau. Goldsmith was following the example 
of Montesquieu in writing his Chinese Letters ; and Mon- 
tesquieu's influence is discernible in the philosophical 
histories of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. Fielding, 
but especially Smollett, owed a good deal to Lesage; 
and Sterne was a disciple of the sentimental school of 
Rousseau. It was Quesnay's lamp that, as Carlyle says, 
kindled the lamp of Adam Smith. It must not be for- 
gotten that English influence on French literature was 
not less marked. There was action and counteraction 
between the two countries, with this difference, that 
while French influence manifested itself mainly in form 
and style, English influence affected rather ideas and the 
matter of thought. 

CLASSIFICATION OP THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 

I. P(9e#5. — Dryden, Pope, Thomson, Gray, Cowper, and 
Burns. 
Next after these as worthy of note, hut of unequal merit, 
come — Waller, Butler, Denham, Cowley, Mar- 
VELL, Prior, Parnell, Young, Ramsay, Gay, Col- 
lins, Goldsmith, Crabbe, Blake. 
II. Dramatists.— OTVf AY, Congreve, and Farquhar. 

Other famous drarnatists of the period include — Dry- 
den, Wycherley, Vanbrugh, Goldsmith, Sheri- 
dan. 
III. Essayists and Critics.— ^teeij-r, Addison, Johnson, Gold- 
smith, and Burke. 
To these add — Cowley, Temple, Dryden, Bentley, 
Arbuthnot, Swift. 



CLASSIFICATION OF PRINCIPAL AUTHORS— POETS 149 



IV. Novelists and Narrative Writers. — Defoe, Swift, Richard- 
son, Fielding, Sterne, and Smollett. 

Other icell-knoicn names in this department are — Addi- 
son, Johnson, Goldsmith, and Fanny Bdrney. 
V. Historians and Biographers. — Burnet, Hume, Robertson, 
Gibbon, and Boswell. 
To these add — Evelyn, Pepys, Middleton, Smollett, 
Goldsmith, Roscoe, and Mitford. 
V 1 . Religio us a nd Philosophical Writers. — Bun yan, Locke , Berke- 
ley, and Adam Smith. 

Other famous or popular authors of this class include 
—Baxter, Cudworth, Robert Boyle, Barrow, 
TiLLOTsoN, South, Newton, Lord Shaftesbury, 
Watts, Clarke, Butler, Hutcheson, Wesley, 
Reid, Hume, Priestley, Paley. 

Living into this period (1660-1789), but belonging in cast of 
genius, or quality of style, or in historical position, rather to the 
preceding period, were : George Wither, Robert Herrick, James 
Shirley, Thomas Hobbes, Izaak Walton, Sir Thomas Browne, 
Edward Hyde (Lord Clarendon), John Milton, and Jeremy Tay- 
lor. 

POETS 

The poets laureate of the period — take them all in all — 
are by no means representative of their class. With one 
notable exception, Dryden, they might almost be character- 
ized as a race of nobodies. Personal influence, and court 
favor or caprice, rather than poetical merit, too often secured 
the appointment, till the office was no longer regarded as 
honorable, and not seldom went a-begging for an occupant, 
down even to the time of Sir Walter Scott. Here is the 

list: 

Poets Laureate of the Period, 1660-1789 



Sir William Davenant 
John Dry den . 
Thomas Shadwell 
Nahum Tate 
Nicholas Rowe . 
Laurence Eusden 
Colley Gibber . 
William Whitehead 
Thomas Warton . 



Laureate from 1637 to 1668 

" 1668 " 1688 

" 1688 " 1693 

" 1692 " 1715 

" 1715 " 1718 

" 1718 " 1730 

" 1730 " 1757 

" 1757 " 1788 

" 1788 " 1790 



150 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Davenant succeeded Ben Jonson, to whom, in 1630, let- 
ters-patent of the office were first granted, the salary be- 
ing fixed at £100 and a tierce of canary (one-third of a 
pipe, or 40 gallons) per annum. The only duty attaching 
to the office was the composition of a birthday ode for the 
king, or the celebration in verse of some national victory. 
In the next period, when Southey became laureate, the gift 
of wine was commuted into a payment of £27, and the 
birthday ode, having become a cuckoo song, was abandoned. 
The office is now, therefore, more a sinecure than ever. 

The great English poet between Milton and Pope, John 
Dryden (1G31-1700), was born of a good family at Aid- 
winkle, m Northamptonshire. He was educated at West- 
minster School, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Nineteen 
when he entered the University, he remained there for 
seven years without distinguishing himself further than by 
taking his B.A. degree in the ordinary course. He would 
seem, however, to have been a careful student of current 
politics, and to have had a leaning to the side of the Com- 
monwealth party in the violent dissensions of the times. It 
may have been because it was the triumphant party, for on 
the restoration of monarchy he became an enthusiastic Roy- 
alist. 

The death of his father, while he was still at Cambridge, 
left him the possessor of but a modest independency, and 
he ventured upon a literary career. The shortest and surest 
road to fortune and fame was through the theatre, and there- 
fore, and for no other reason — for his instincts by no means 
lay in that direction — he set out on the journey with the 
vigor which characterized all he did. He was then thirty- 
two years of age, and he continued to turn out plays to 
order for the next eighteen years. He had engaged to sup- 
ply the company of players at the King's House with a series 
of original dramas or adaptations at a fixed rate ; and there 
can be no doubt that his work for the theatre was for all 
those years a great, and indeed the main, source of his in- 
come. Not much more can be said of his dramas than that 



JOHN DRYDEN 151 

they suited tlie times and were popular. But the times were 
vicious, and he pandered to the public taste. 

He married the same year in which he began to write 
plays, and the match he made, if not a happy one, was at 
least brilliant, and brought him the advantage of aristocratic 
society. His wife was Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of 
the Earl of Berkshire. About the middle of his career as a 
playwright he conjoined the offices of poet laureate and 
historiographer royal, worth £200 a year, and several years 
later received in succession a pension from the king and a 
good appointment in the customs. His yearly income then 
could not have been equivalent to less than £3000 of mod- 
ern money. 

At the age of fifty he turned to satire, a species of com- 
position for which he was naturally fitted, and to which the 
political situation seemed to invite him. He took the side 
of the king and the Duke of York against the friends of the 
Protestant succession and their leader, the Earl of Shaftes- 
bury. When the Duke of York came to the throne in 1685, 
Dryden was continued in his offices, and became a Roman 
Catholic. Misfortune overtook him at the Revolution ; he 
was stripped of his offices — the laureateship, to his intense 
disgust, being given to his personal enemy, the despised 
Shadwell. He tried to restore his fortunes by recommenc- 
ing to write for the stage, but the attempt was unsuccessful ; 
he did better at translating Juvenal, Ovid, Horace, Homer, 
and, more especially, the whole of Virgil — the last bringing 
him £1200. He was now independent of the pecuniary aid 
which Lord Dorset generously ojffered him. The last tw^elve 
years of his life were the busiest. His powers of varied 
versification seemed to be still developing ; and he was in 
the midst of a commission to produce ten thousand lines of 
verse for Tonson the publisher, when, physically worn out 
but mentally as energetic as ever, death overtook him near 
the close of his sixty-ninth year. He was honored with a 
public funeral and interment in Westminster Abbey. 

Dryden's literary career opened with three panegyrics — 
the first, in 1659, in praise of "His Highness Oliver, Lord 



152 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Protector;" the next two, in 1660 and 1661 respectively, 
Astrcea Bedux, and a poem on tlie coronation, in praise of 
" His Sacred Majesty, Charles the Second." These and 
Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders, written in 1666 on 
the subject of the Dutch war and the Great Fire, constitute 
the first division of his works. They show the formation of 
his style on the models of Davenant and Waller. 

The second division of his works consists of his dramas, 
some twenty -two in all, beginning in 1663 with The Wild 
Gallant, and including as his best, or at least his most pop- 
ular efforts of this kind. The Conquest of Granada and All 
for Love. All for Love appeared in 1678, and was regarded 
by himself as his dramatic masterpiece ; it invites compar- 
ison with Shakespeare's treatment of the same subject in 
Antony and Cleopatra. At first Dry den wrote his dramas 
in rhyme, following the French fashion, and defended his 
practice on the plea that rhyme, "which most regulates the 
fancy, and gives the judgment its busiest employment, is 
like to bring forth the richest and clearest thoughts." Lat- 
terly he abandoned his position, and returned to blank-verse 
in All for Love. Scott more than hints that Dryden wasted 
the best years of his life, and prostituted his great powers 
— more worthily employed on a cherished scheme of an epic 
on King Arthur — in the composition of plays vicious in 
both morals and art, but seeks to put the blame less on the 
poet than on his patrons : 

"Dryden in immortal strain 
Had raised the Table Round again, 
But that a ribald king and court 
Bade him toil on to make them sport, . . . 
The world defrauded of the high design. 
Profaned the God-given strength, and marred the lofty line." 

The third division of Dry den's works includes his three 
great satires — Absalom and Achito2)hel, the first part in 1681, 
the second in 1682 ; and The Medal and Macfecknoe, both 
in 1682. These are correlated, and had their origin in the 
political differences of the day. The first is an attack upon 



JOHN DRYDEN 153 

tlie Earl of Shaftesbury under the name of Acliitophel, rep- 
resented as counselling- Absalom, the young Duke of Mon- 
mouth, into impious hostility against his father. Shaftes- 
bury was tried for treason, and acquitted, whereupon his 
friends expressed their delight by striking a medal with the 
motto Lcetamur. The incident furnished Dryden with the 
subject of his second satire. His enemies put forward Shad- 
well to reply, and this man's infamous attack upon Dryden 
provoked the rejoinder which dubbed Shadwell " Macfleck- 
noc," after a scribbling Irish priest, and forever demolished 
his reputation. 

The fourth division of Dryden's works comprises two 
poems on religious subjects. The one, Religio Laid, or a 
Layman's Faith, published in 1682, seems to have been sug- 
gested by the Popish plot, and is a defence of the Church 
of England ; the other, the allegory of The Hind and the 
Panther, published in 1687, marks Dryden's conversion to 
Roman Catholicism, and is a defence of the Catholic Church. 
A milk-white hind represents the Church of Rome, and the 
Church of England now figures as a creature of the spotted 
kind. 

The fifth division of Dryden's poetical work represents 
the extreme and varied activity of the last ten years of his 
life. It includes fragmentary translations of Greek and 
Latin poetry, notably a complete version of Virgil ; para- 
phrases of tales from Boccaccio and Chaucer, commonly 
known as The Fables ; and a sublime ode on the power of 
music, called Alexander's Feast. His Virgil and the Ode 
appeared in 1697 ; The Fables in 1700, the year of his death. 
Dryden's most enduring and perfect work is seen in his 
Satires, the Ode, and The Fables. 

The chief quality of Dryden's style is vigor. Gray well 
describes it as a car borne wide over the fields of glory by 

" Two coursers of ethereal race 
With necks in thunder clothed and long-resounding pace." 

From Waller's hands Dryden received the heroic couplet; 
and established upon it the classical school of English verse 



154 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

which Pope developed, and to wbich Goldsmith contributed 
the latest graces. The great want of Dryden's poetry is ro- 
mance. He has the beauties of form and color, but his 
flower wants fragrance. 

Dryden's prose style has the best qualities of his verse. 
He is never dull or obscure or undecided. There is no 
pedantry in his strong, clear, idiomatic sentences. It is 
chiefly as a critic that he writes in prose, and his writings 
take the form, for the most part, of Prefaces, or Dedications. 
Excellent specimens of his prose style are his Essay on He- 
roic Plays, prefixed to The Conquest of Granada. ; his Dedi- 
cation, prefixed to Aureng-Zehe ; his Preface to All for Love; 
and his Preface to The Fables. But best known of all is the 
Essay on Dramatic Poesy, in the form of a conversation be- 
tween four friends, of whom the poet is one. It was pub- 
lished separately in 1667. 

" Of these the false Achitophel was first, 
A name to all succeeding ages curst: 
For close designs and crooked counsels fit, 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, 
Restless, unfixed in principles and place, 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: 
A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
Fretted the pigmy body to decay 
And o'er-informed the tenement of clay. 
A daring pilot in extremity. 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high, 
He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit. 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 
Great wits are sure to madness near allied, 
And tliin partitions do their bounds divide ; 
Else, why should he, with wealth and honour blest. 
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? 
Punish a body which he could not please, 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 

A man so various that he^ seemed to be ^ Zimri 

Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong. 
Was everything by starts and notliing long ; 



JOHN DRYDEN 



155 



But in the course of one revolving moon 
Was cbymist, fiddler, statesman, and buffoon." 

— Absalom and Achitopliel. 

'Dim as tlie borrowed beams of moon and stars 
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers 
Is Reason to the soul ; and as on high 
These rolling fires discover but the sky. 
Not light us here, so Reason's glimmering ray 
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way. 
But guide us upward to a better day. 
And as those nightly tapers disappear 
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere, 
So pale grows Reason at Religion's sight, 
So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light." 

— Beligio Laid. 

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 

Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged ; 

Without unspotted, innocent within, 

She feared no danger, for she knew no sin. 

Yet had she oft been chased with horns and hounds 

And Scythian shafts ; and many winged wounds 

Aimed at her heart ; was often forced to fly, 

And doomed to death, though fated not to die. . . . 

Panting and pensive now she ranged alone. 

And wandered in the kingdoms once her own. 

The common hunt, though from their rage restrained 

By sovereign power, her company disdained. 

Grinned as they passed, and with a glaring eye 

Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity, 

'Tis true she bounded by and tripped so light, 

They had not time to take a steady sight ; 

For truth has such a face and such a mien 

As to be loved needs only to be seen." 

—The Hind and the Panther. 



" Three poets, in distant ages born, 
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed, 
The next in majesty, in both the last : 
The force of Nature could no further go ; 
To make a third she joined the former two." 

— 0)1 Milton. 



156 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

The literary successor of Dryden, Alexander Pope (1688- 
1744), was born in Lombard Street, London. He was the 
son of Catholic parents ; his father a successful merchant in 
the linen trade, his mother (Edith Turner) of a good York- 
shire family. Shortly after his birth his father withdrew 
from business to the privacy of a small estate he had pur- 
chased at Binfield, about nine miles from the town of Wind- 
sor, and on the border of Windsor Forest. Hither, after 
some desultory schooling, latterly in London, Pope came 
home for good at the age of twelve ; and here he resided 
with his parents, reading, writing, and visiting at his own 
sweet will, till the year 1716. Before that date he had 
made his mark in literature. 

Pope's religious creed barred him from the learned pro- 
fessions. For the active life of a business man he had no 
desire, neither had nature given him physical fitness for it — 
for, besides being of dwarfish size, he was deformed, weak, 
and constantly ailing. There remained, as the only outlet 
for a genius indefatigably active, the career of a literary 
man or an artist; and to literature, after an inquiring glance 
at painting, he gave himself up with entire devotion. His 
literary career is the history of his life. His father, whose 
indulgence the son never abused, left him free to make his 
own choice. A brief interview in his twelfth year with 
Dryden is supposed to have determined Pope to poetry ; 
but there is no doubt that the advice of Walsh, the critic, 
" to aim at a correct style," pointed out to him the particu- 
lar walk of poetry by following which he early came to fame. 
Pope " lisped in numbers." Before he was sixteen he had 
written several thousands of lines, most of which he had the 
good sense to destroy, sparing, however, a translation of the 
first book of The Thehaid of Statins, and The Pastorals, to 
attest the early maturity and astonishing correctness and 
ease of his style. The Pastorals were not published till 
1709, the year in which he wrote his Essay on Criticism, a 
didactic poem on the laws and history of literary taste. The 
Essay was published in 1711, and at once brought Pope's 
name into prominent public notice. Next year the publica- 



ALEXANDER POPE I57 

tion of The Rape of the Lock established his fame as the 
foremost poet of the day. The object of the poem was to 
reconcile a lady to her lover. The lady, Miss Arabella Fer- 
mor, belonged to one of the Oxfordshire families^with which 
Pope was acquainted ; and the offence of her lover, Lord 
Petre, was the theft of a lock of her hair as she was drink- 
ing coffee at a card-party at Hampton. The poem is a brill- 
iant mock-heroic in three cantos, is the most oriorinal of all 
Pope's poems, and is properly to be regarded as an epic of 
fashionable life of the time of Queen Anne. 

Pope's growing fame had now brought round him many 
friends, of whom the most notable in literature were Gay 
and Addison ; to these the publication of Windsor Forest 
in 1713 added the important name of Swift. Under the 
presidency of Swift — punningly designated Martinus Scrib- 
blerus — a club was shortly formed by Pope and his friends 
for the purpose of warning off incompetent writers from 
the field of literature. Pope's great service to literature as 
a member of this club was to come some fourteen years 
later; meanwhile, with the publication in 1714 of The Tem- 
ple of Fame, a paraphrase from Chaucer, the first stage of 
Pope's career ended, and he next addressed himself to the 
mighty task of rendering Homer into English couplets. 
The first part of his translation of The Iliad appeared in 
1715, and the last in 1720. Then came The Odyssey, in 
which he was assisted by two Cambridge scholars, Fenton 
and Broome — the first part appearing in 1723, and the last 
in 1725. For the work of his ten years of absorption in 
Homer, Pope received about as many thousands of pounds. 
It made him independent. The translation of Homer does 
not, however, represent the whole work of the second stage 
of Pope's life ; an edition of Shakespeare, of no great merit 
it is true, and two impassioned poems of great power — an 
Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, and the Epis- 
tle of Eloisa to Ahelard — belong to the same period. Mean- 
while, in the spring of 1716, the Popes had left Binfield 
to settle at Chiswick, below Kew, on the left bank of the 
Thames ; here the elder Pope died, and in the spring of 



158 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

1718 the poet left Chiswick, and settled with his mother at 
Twickenham. Twickenham is identified with the last twen- 
ty-six years — almost the half — of Pope's life. Here in a 
modest villa on a bank of the Thames he enjoyed fame and 
fortune, received friends and admirers, and was as happy as 
his temperament and his enemies would permit him to be. 
The grounds that went with the villa extended to five acres; 
Pope had a taste for horticulture, which he inherited from 
his father, and he took great delight in laying out his five 
acres according to a plan of his own, contriving to find 
room for a shell -temple and a garden-house, a bowling- 
green and a grove, an orangery, and even a wilderness with 
miniature mountains, besides a vinery and a plot for pot- 
herbs. Part of the grounds was separated from the house 
by the public road, but Pope maintained his privacy by 
tunnelling under the turnpike — converting the tunnel into 
a grotto, which he adorned with a fountain, and crystals, 
shells, and natural curiosities of whatever kind. 

Before he left Binfield he had quarrelled with Addison, 
who had injudiciously, if not unjustly, praised Tickell as 
the best translator of Homer. At Chiswick he fell out 
with Gibber on a small point that touched his literary 
vanity. At Twickenham commenced his inglorious feud 
with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Yet Pope could be a 
constant friend. His attachment to his parents is beyond 
praise ; and his friendly relations with Gay and Swift re- 
mained unbroken to the end. It was at Twickenham that 
Pope entered, in 1727-1728, on the third stage of his career 
as a man of letters. It was now that he wrote his satirical 
and philosophical poems. His great satire. The Dunciad, 
was the outcome of his connection with the Scribblerus 
Club ; and Swift had actually proposed to him a satire on 
the subject "The Progress of Dulness," on the lines of 
Dryden's Macfiecknoe. As soon as Pope was free of Homer 
he was ready to scourge the dunces, and, looking around 
for a hero of Dulness, pitched upon Lewis Theobald (who 
had attacked his edition of Shakespeare) as well suited to 
be the Macfiecknoe of his day. Over a hundred persons 



ALEXANDER POPE 159 

are named in The Dunciad, the great majority of them 
names now and nothing more ; but the poem is something 
nobler than a satire of mere personal abuse, however well 
deserved, and the names may stand as counters, typifying 
to each generation in turn the various phases of its own 
literary stupidity. The first Dunciad appeared in 1728; a 
superfluous fourth book was added in 1742, with the un- 
fortunate substitution of Gibber instead of Theobald as 
hero. Of his philosophical poems, his Essay on Man^ in 
four epistles, published 1732-1734, is the best known ; it is a 
brilliant statement of the commonplace philosophy of Lord 
Bolingbroke, a sophist and man of the world, for whom 
Pope had a strange veneration. The Moral Essays^ in five 
epistles, published 1732-1735, exhibit Pope's skill in the 
satire of characters ; and the satires in imitation of Horace 
(1733-1737), notably the famous Epistle to Mr. Arbuthnot 
which forms their Prologue, continue Avhat the Moral Es- 
says began, with even more pungency and sprightliness. 
Pope's last days of pain and weakness were cheered by the 
kind ministrations of Martha Blount, one of two sisters of 
about his own age, for whom he cherished an affectionate 
regard almost from boyhood. To her he left the most of 
his personal property. 

Pope made the heroic couplet his own peculiar measure, 
and he scarcely used any other. While wanting the vigor 
and sweep of Dryden, he shows superior finish of diction, 
an easier and nimbler movement of verse, and more sus- 
tained brilliancy of wit. He had no faculty for lyrical or 
dramatic writing, and the bouquet of romance is almost 
entirely absent even from his best poetry. But there is no 
obscurity in Pope ; his ideas are clear, and expressed with 
a clearness and brevity that reach perfection. No poet save 
Shakespeare is oftener quoted — not for the originality of 
his thought, but for the proverb-like quality of his language. 

"Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those. 
Favours to none, to all she smiles extends. 
Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 



160 1'HE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike ; 

And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. 

Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of pride. 

Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to hide. 

If to her share some female errors fall. 

Look on her face, and you'll forget them all." 

— Rape of the Lock (Belinda). 

"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed; 
By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed; 
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned; 
By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourned. 
What though no friends in sable weeds appear, 
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year, 
And bear about the mockery of woe 
To midnight dances and the public show ! 
What though no weeping loves thy ashes grace. 
Nor polished marble emulate thy face ! 
What though no sacred earth allow thee room, 
Nor hallowed dirge be muttered o'er thy tomb ! 
Yet shall thy grave with rising flowers be dressed, 
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast. 
There shall the morn her earliest tears bestow. 
There the first roses of the year shall blow ; 
While angels with their silver wings o'ershade 
The ground now sacred by thy relics made. 
So, peaceful rests, without a stone, a name. 
What once had beauty, titles, wealth, and fame. 
How loved, how honoured once, avails thee not, 
To whom related, or by whom begot. 
A heap of dust alone remains of thee — 
'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be." 

— Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. 

"Peace to all such ! but were there one whose fires 
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires; 
Blessed with each talent and each art to please. 
And born to write, converse, and live with ease ; 
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone. 
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne ; 
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes. 
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise ; 
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, 
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; 
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike ; 
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike ; 



JAMES THOMSON 161 

Alike reserved to blame or to commend, 
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend ; 
Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, 
And so obliging that be ne'er obliged ; 
Like Cato, give bis little senate laws, 
And sit attentive to bis own applause ; 
While wits and templars every sentence raise, 
And wonder with a foolish face of praise : 
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be ? 
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ?" 

— Prologue to the Satires. 

Both Dryden and Pope bad found tbeir proper vocation 
as poets in the study of man. It was reserved for a Scot- 
tish writer to bring back again into the domain of English 
poetry, but more directly than ever, the study of external 
nature. James Thomson (1700-1 748) was born in the manse 
of Ednara, in Roxburghshire. His father, the minister of 
the parish, belonged to a family of gardeners ; but on his 
mother's side the poet traced his descent from the ancient 
Border family of Home. Only a few weeks after his birth 
his father removed to the living of Southdean in the same 
county, and here the boyhood of the future poet was passed, 
in a district associated with Chevy Chase, under the shadow 
of the pastoral Cheviots. In his twelfth year he began to 
attend the grammar-school at Jedburgh, where he read 
Virgil, who was to be ever afterwards his favorite poet. 
Tlie charm of Virgil's descriptions, the sylvan scenery of 
Jed vale, and the encouragement of Robert Riccaltoun, 
a young college-bred farmer of the neighborhood, made 
Thomson a poet while he was yet a school -boy. But 
few of his juvenile verses escaped the holocaust to which 
he had the good sense to doom them at the close of every 
year. 

At the beginning of his sixteenth year he w^as sent to 
Edinburgh University, the design of his parents being to 
educate him for the Scottish Church ; but he had not been 
a student many months when his father suddenly died, and 
his mother, with the rest of her children, came to live in 
Edinburgh. Though the city was now his home, he still 
11 



162 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

kept up, by frequent visits in vacation - time, a cLerislied 
connection with his native Teviotdale. At college he 
showed a preference for the study of natural philosophy, 
and widened his acquaintance with the classics. English 
poetry, especially as represented by Milton and Dryden, 
was a private study, and he still carried on the practice 
of versifying, chiefly on rural subjects. Some of his early 
verses, contributed to a local Miscellany, such as the lines 
On a Country Life, and the lines On Happiness, are written 
in the heroic measure, and contain several ideas and images 
which afterwards reappeared in The Seasons and The Castle 
of Indolence. In 1720 Thomson was a student of divinity ; 
but the subject, as it was then taught at Edinburgh, does 
not seem to have been congenial to him. Still he persevered, 
until, in the last year of his course, the condemnation by 
his professor of an exercise on one of the Psalms drove his 
mind from divinity and changed the course of his life. The 
exercise was condemned for its floridity of style. Thomson 
suddenly resolved to seek his fortunes in London. What 
his plans precisely were cannot be known from his corre- 
spondence, but there is room for the inference that they 
combined some literary design with the hope of obtaining, 
through the influence of his mother's family relations, some 
post in the political service of the government. He had 
reached the middle point of his life when he formed this 
resolution— he was now twenty-four. March, 1725, found 
him in London, and from that date onward he was to be in 
England or in English society. 

His first experience of London was the theft, by a pick- 
pocket, of his letters of introduction. Next came the news 
of his mother's death. He had as yet written nothing wor- 
thy of being printed. The friends upon whose influence he 
had relied could give him no assistance except a humble 
tutorship in the family of Lord Binning, at East Barnet, 
near London ; and here — thrown unexpectedly upon his own 
resources — he began in gloom his famous poem on Winter. 
He finished it in the winter months of his first year in Eng- 
land, and it was published in the following March, exactly 



JAMES THOMSON 163 

one year from the time of his arrival in London. He got 
only three guineas for it ; but it was a success from the first, 
and the unexpected commencement of a new era in the his- 
tory of English poetry. A second edition was called for in 
June, and five editions had been issued by 1728. It was 
like a breath of fresh country air to dwellers in a crowded 
city. The critics praised it, and Thomson found himself 
surrounded by friends. Its success acted like a spur to his 
industry. He gave up his tutorship, and wrote in succes- 
sion poems of Summer, Spring, a,nd Autumn. In 1730 the 
collected Seasons appeared ; his first tragedy, Sophonisha, 
was produced at Drury Lane in the same year ; and he then 
set out on a tour through France and Italy with young 
Charles Talbot, the son of the future lord chancellor. He 
was absent from England about two years. 

On his return he was appointed secretary of briefs in 
the Court of Chancery, and set about the composition of a 
poem on Liberty, which he designed for his masterpiece. It 
is a blank-verse poem in five parts, and came out in three 
instalments in 1734-35-36. It was even then a failure, and 
has never been read since. Thomson now settled in a gar- 
den-house in Kew-foot Lane, Richmond, where he passed 
the rest of his life in easy circumstances. Among his many 
friends were the poets Pope, Shenstone, Collins, and Arm- 
strong; most intimate of all was Mr., afterwards Lord, Lyt- 
telton, at whose seat of Hagley Park, in Worcestershire, 
Thomson was a welcome visitor. A remarkable feature of 
Thomson's character was the constancy of his friendships. 
He was the most amiable and genial of men, cheerful in 
solitude, yet not averse to society. On the loss of his sec- 
retaryship, consequent on the death of Lord Chancellor 
Talbot, he was pensioned by the Prince of Wales, and re- 
newed his efforts at dramatic composition. Agamemnon 
was produced in 1738; Edward and Eleanora was ready in 
1739; and in 1740 he wrote, conjointly with Mallet, The 
Masque of Alfred — memorable only for the lyric Rule 
Britannia, the work of Thomson. In 1744, through Lyt- 
telton's influence, he was appointed surveyor-general of the 



164 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Leeward Islands, an office which yielded him about £300 a 
year after paying a deputy to do the work. Meanwhile he 
had been for many years leisurely engaged upon The Castle 
of Indolence, a poem which had its origin in the banter of 
his friends, who remonstrated with him on the growth of his 
laziness. It is an apology for his own indulgence in indo- 
lence, and a warning against the indulgence of it in others. 
It was published in the early summer of IV48 ; three months 
later Thomson died of a neglected cold, caught on the 
Thames. He left behind him the tragedy of CoriolanuSy 
which was produced in the following year. 

Thomson wrote little in the heroic couplet at a time when 
the heroic couplet was the popular measure of poetry. The 
works upon which his fame rests are The Seasons and The 
Castle of Indolence — the former and more popular in blank- 
verse, the latter and more exquisite in the Spenserian stanza. 
He was the first to show how well blank-verse suited poetical 
descriptions of nature. In this respect he set the example 
to Cowper and Wordsworth. His style is copious even 
to redundancy, but always suggestive and inspiring. It is 
only in the reflective passages that he becomes pompously 
prolix ; when nature is the theme, whether it be a snow- 
storm on the Cheviots or a redbreast at the window, it is 
astonishing with what felicity of language he brings the 
scene to our eyes. 

Thomson's great service to literature lay in extending the 
domain of poetry by making the scenes and varying as- 
pects of external nature themes for poetical treatment. 
Nature had been often described before, but only incident- 
ally and in a manner subservient to the main interest — Man. 
Thomson made Nature directly his subject : it was the grand 
and central interest of his poetry ; and he delineated it with 
an exactness of portraiture never shown before, and with a 
romantic charm of coloring that attracted many followers. 
Johnson describes him as " looking round on Nature and on 
Life with the eye of a poet, the eye which distinguishes 
in everything presented to its view whatever there is on 
which imagination can deliffht to be detained." His influ- 



JAMES THOMSON ] 65 

ence was at once and widely felt, and is still active in Eng- 
lish poetry. The impetus he gave to the study of nature 
was continued by Cowper and AVordsworth, Keats and 
Byron. The wholesome moral tendency of his poetry is 
not the least of his merits. He left " no line which, dying, 
he could wish to blot." 

" But should you lure 
From his dark haunt, beneath the tangled roots 
Of pendent trees, the monarch of the brook, 
Behooves you then to ply your finest art. 
Long time he, following cautious, scans the fly; 
And oft attempts to seize it, but as oft 
The dimpled water speaks his jealous fear. 
At last, while haply o'er the shaded sun 
Passes a cloud, he desperate takes the death 
With sullen plunge. At once he darts along, 
Deep struck, and runs out all the lengthened line ; 
Then seeks the farthest ooze, the sheltering weed, 
The caverned bank, his old secure abode ; 
And flies aloft, and flounces round the pool. 
Indignant of the guile. With yielding hand, 
That feels him still, yet to his furious course 
Gives way, you, now retiring, following now 
Across the stream, exhaust his idle rage : 
Till floating broad upon his breathless side, 
And to his fate abandoned, to the shore 
You gayly drag your unresisting prize." 

—Spring. 

"The meek-eyed Morn appears, mother of dews. 

At first faint gleaming in the dappled east ; 

Till far o'er ether spreads the widening glow; 

And, from before the lustre of her face. 

White break the clouds away. With quickened step 

Brown Night retires ; young Day pours in apace, 

And opens all the lawny prospect wide. 

The dripping rock, the mountain's misty top 

Swell on the sight, and brighten with the dawn. 

Blue, through the dusk, the smoking currents shine ; 

And from the bladed field the fearful hare 

Limps awkward; while along the forest glade 

The wild deer trip, and, often turning, gaze 

At early passenger." 

•^ —Summer. 



166 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

" One alone, 
The redbreast, sacred to the household gods, 
Wisely regardful of the embroiling sky, 
In joyless fields and thorny thickets, leaves 
His shivering mates, and pays to trusted man 
His annual visit. Half afraid, he first 
Against the window beats ; then, brisk, alights 
On the warm hearth ; then, hopping o'er the floor, 
Eyes all the smiling family askance, 
And pecks and starts, and wonders where he is : 
Till, more familiar grown, the table crumbs 
Attract his slender feet." 

— Winter. 

"A pleasing land of drowsy-head it was ; 
Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; 
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, 
Forever flushing round a summer sky. 
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly 
Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast, 
And the calm pleasures, always hovered nigh ; 
But whate'er smackt of noyance, or unrest. 
Was far, far off expelled from this delicious nest. 

•'Near the pavilions where we slept, still ran 
Soft-tinkling streams, and dashing waters fell, 
And sobbing breezes sighed, and oft began 
(So worked the wizard) wintry storms to swell, 
As heaven and earth they would together mell ^ : ^ mingle 
At doors and windows, threatening, seemed to call 
The demons of the tempest, growling fell. 
Yet the least entrance found they none at all ; 

Whence sweeter grew our sleep, secure in massy hall." 

— The Castle of Indolence. 

*' Supported on his shortened arm he leans. 
Prone, agonizing ; with incumbent fate 
Heavy declines his head ; yet dark beneath 
The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers, 
Shame, indignation, unaccomplished rage : 
And the cheated eye expects his fall." 

— Liberty (The Gladiator). 

"As those we love decay, we die in part. 
String after string is severed from the heart ; 



THOMAS GRAY 167 

Till loosened life, at last, but breathing clay. 
Without one pang, is glad to fall away. 
Unhappy he who latest feels the blow, 
Whose eyes have wept o'er every friend laid low. 
Dragged lingering on from partial death to death, 
Till, dying, all he can resign is breath." 

— 0)1 the Death of Mr. Aikman. 



" To thee belongs the rural reign ; 

Thy cities shall with commerce shine ; 
All thine shall be the subject main, 

And every shore it circles thine. 
Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves ! 
Britons never shall be slaves. 

" The muses, still with freedom found, 
Shall to thy happy coast repair ; 
Blest isle, w^ith matchless beauty crowned, 

And manly hearts to guard the fair. 
Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves ! 
Britons never shall be slaves." 

— Alfred: a 

No English poet has built for himself so durable a mon- 
ument on a foundation so narrow as Thomas Gray (1*716- 
1771). This consummate artist in verse was a Londoner 
by birth, the fifth of a family of twelve children born to 
Philip Gray and his wife Dorothy Antrobus. His father, a 
scrivener in good circumstances, was a man of an ill-regulated 
temper bordering on insanity. It was to his mother that 
the poet was indebted for his maintenance, education, and 
every home comfort that he knew. She died when he was 
thirty-three, and he then inscribed his obligations and affec- 
tion on her tombstone in the words — " Here sleep the re- 
mains of Dorothy Gray, widow, the careful, tender mother 
of many children, one of whom alone had the misfortune to 
survive her." Even after her marriage his mother, in part- 
nership with an elder sister, carried on business as a mil- 
liner, and it was from the profits of this business that Gray 
received his schooling — his father refusing to educate him. 
He was sent to Eton in his eleventh year, where he was fort- 



1G8 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

unate to be under the care of two of his mother's brothers, 
then assistant masters at that famous college. Gray was 
seven years at Eton, and became an excellent scholar, and 
even a moralist, as some of his Latin verses of this period 
which have been preserved well testify. He seems to have 
been a shy and studious lad, averse to the rougher sports of 
healthy boyhood, and intimate with only a few of his youth- 
ful companions. Among these were Horace Walpole, son of 
the Prime Minister, and Richard West, a grandson of Burnet 
the historian, weakly boys of about the same age as Gray. 

In 1734 Gray went to Cambridge, whither Walpole soon 
followed ; and there he remained, a student of Peterhouse, 
till 1738. Classical learning was at that time in a depraved 
state at Cambridge ; for mathematics Gray, whose bent was 
all to classical learning, had no taste whatever ; and he was 
sufficiently melancholy among his fellow-students, whom he 
described as " a pretty collection of desolate animals." His 
vacations he passed at his uncle's in Buckinghamshire, where 
he was indolently happy with Virgil among the Burnham 
beeches. He now began to write English verse, preluding 
on the heroic couplet, with Dryden for his model, and try- 
ing his hand, like Pope before him, at a version of part of 
The Thebaid of Statins. 

In the spring of 1739 he set out, on the invitation of Wal- 
pole, on a tour on the Continent. He was absent from Eng- 
land for two years and a half. The friends visited France, 
Switzerland, and Italy, climbed to the Grande Chartreuse, 
and saw most of the cities of Southern Europe. It was the 
happiest part of Gray's life. " In our little journey up to 
the Grande Chartreuse," he wrote to West, "I do not re- 
member to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that 
there was no restraining ; not a precipice, not a torrent, not 
a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry." Unfortu- 
nately they quarrelled, near Bologna, and came home singly 
and by separate routes in the autumn of 1741, the one ten 
days behind the other. Walpole was the offender, and the 
offence is said to have been his opening one of Gray's let- 
ters. Three years later the quarrel was made up. 



THOMAS GRAY 1G9 

Shortly after his return to England, Gray's father died of 
gout, and his mother, retiring from business, went to live 
with her sisters at Stoke-Pogis in Buckingham, a small vil- 
lage about four miles north of Eton. Here Gray, after a 
brief futile attempt to begin the study of law, the profes- 
sion for which he was intended, entered upon his literary 
career with a freshness and activity for which his long holi- 
day of travel had prepared him. The year 1742 is memo- 
rable for three odes — On the Spring, On a Dutant Prospect 
of Eton College, and To Adversity ; for a beautiful Sonnet on 
the Death of West (an event which happened in June) ; and 
for the design and partial execution of the immortal Elegy. 
After this sudden and brilliant outburst. Gray relapsed into 
silence for five years. He had gone back to Cambridge in 
the winter of 1742, that he might not be a burden on the 
slender fortune of his mother and her two sisters at Stoke ; 
and having taken the degree of LL.B. in 1744, was installed 
as a resident at Peterhouse. The rest of his life centred 
round Cambridge, and was only varied externally by regular 
summer visits to Stoke, an occasional trip to London, and 
expeditions to the more picturesque parts of England, such 
as the Lake Country and the Yale of Wye, and the Scottish 
Highlands. A melancholy, which did not overwhelm him, 
but which seldom lifted, fell upon his spirits, and his ordi- 
nary refuge from its gloom was the classics. He became 
a studious recluse, and " perhaps the most learned man in 
Europe." In 1747 he wrote the mock-heroic Ode on the 
Death of a Favourite Cat. A more important work was the 
completion of The Elegy in a Country Churchyard in 1750. 
His Pindaric Odes (properly so called), The Progress of Poe- 
sy, and The Bard were the work of 1754-1757. These were 
published in 1757 at Walpole's private press at Strawberry 
Hill, and were at once successful. It was these, and not 
the Ode on Eton College — which, indeed, attracted no at- 
tention on its first appearance — nor even the Elegy, which 
made Gray to be regarded as the foremost poet of his day. 
He was offered, but declined, the laureateship. It was in 
1764 that Gray paid his first visit to Lowland Scotland; 



170 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

next year, when the hills were aglow with blooming heather, 
he penetrated to the Highlands, and was enraptured with 
the scenery. In 1768 he received the honorary appoint- 
ment (worth, however, £400 a year) of the Professorship of 
Modern History at Cambridge; and in 1769 made his fa- 
mous tour among the English lakes, noting his impressions 
the while in a journal, which shows how nearly he antici- 
pated the Wordsworthian delight in external nature. His 
last expedition was in a boat on the Wye, which he de- 
scended for forty miles, past Tintern Abbey and "a suc- 
cession of nameless wonders." He died in 1771 in Pem- 
broke College, to which he had removed from Peterhouse 
on account of an affront to his dignity some sixteen years 
before. Wordsworth was born the year before Gray's death. 
Besides the poem already mentioned. Gray also wrote 
two Norse odes — The Fatal Sisters and The Descent of 
Odin ; and left two beautiful fragments, the one in heroics, 
The Alliance of Education and Government^ much admired by 
Gibbon — the other, part of an Ode on the Pleasure arising 
from Vicissitude, in which Gray anticipates that reasonable 
joy in common things, commonly regarded as the affir- 
mation of Wordsworth. The style of Gray, though some- 
what too rhetorical and overloaded with allegory, attains on 
the whole the qualities at which he aimed : with " extreme 
conciseness of expression " he is at the same time " pure, 
perspicuous, and musical" His feeling for nature is more 
manifest in his letters and journals than in his verse. Un- 
like Thomson, he never describes nature for its own sake, 
but employs it " as a graceful ornament which ought never 
to make the subject of poetry." His human sympathies are 
finely displayed in his Elegy ; but he reaches his highest 
level, as a poet of the sublime, in The Bard and the Ode to 
Adversity. 

"Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep; 
Isles, that crown the ^gean deep; 
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves, 
Or where Maeander's amber waves 
In lingering labyrinths creep. 



THOMAS GRAY 171 

How do your tuneful echoes languish, 
Mute, but to the voice of anguish. 
Where each old poetic mountain 

Inspiration breathed around, 
Every shade and hallowed fountain 

Murmured deep a solemn sound ?" 

— The Progress of Poesy. 

**See the wretch, that long has tost 
On the thorny bed of pain, 
At length repair his vigor lost, 
And breathe and walk again : 
The meanest floweret of the vale, 
The simplest note that swells the gale, 
The common sun, the air, the skies, 
To him are opening paradise." 

— On Vicissitude. 

"Full many a gem of purest ray serene 

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear ; 
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

—Elegy. 

"In vain to me the smiling mornings shine, 

And reddening Phoebus lifts his golden fire; 
The birds in vain their amorous descant join; 

Or cheerful fields resume their green attire; 
These ears^ alas ! for other notes repine, 

A different object do these ej^es require ; 
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine ; 

And in my breast the imperfect joys expire. 
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, 

And new-born pleasure brings to happier men ; 
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear ; 

To warm their little loves the birds complain ; 
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, 

And weep the more because I weep in vain." 

— Sonnet on the Death of Richard West. 

"Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head. 

Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand I 
Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad, 
Nor circled with the vengeful band 



172 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 16G0-1789 

(As by the impious thou art seen) 
With thundering voice, and threatening mien, 
With screaming Horror's funeral cry, 
Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty. 

"Thy form benign, O goddess, wear. 
Thy milder influence impart. 
Thy philosophic train be there 

To soften, not to wound my heart ; 
The generous spark extinct revive. 
Teach me to love and to forgive, 
Exact my own defects to scan, 
What others are, to feel, and know myself a man." 

— Ode to Adversity. 

"William Cowper (1731-1800) was born in the rectory at 
Great Berkhampstead, in Hertfordshire. He was of aristo- 
cratic connection by both parents. His father was a nephew 
of the first Earl Cowper, Lord Chancellor of England ; his 
mother, who belonged to the family of Dr. Donne, the poet, 
traced her descent from royalty. An affectionate and ex- 
tremely sensitive child, young Cowper was the special care 
of his mother ; and when she died, the boy, then finishing 
his sixth year, was long inconsolable for her loss. More 
than half a century later he recalled the first grief of his 
life, and mourned her loss anew, in lines which are among 
the most tenderly pathetic in English poetry. His sorrows 
only began with her death. He was sent to a boarding- 
school, where he was bullied and tortured for two years by 
one of his school-fellows. It was this wretched experience 
rather than his memory of Westminster that was responsible 
for the bitter attack on public-school life contained in his 
Tirocinium. At Westminster Cowper spent over seven years 
in the study of the classics. Here he had Warren Has- 
tings for a school-fellow, and Vincent Bourne for a teacher. 
There are pleasant reminiscences of this part of his life in 
the first book of The Task. 

In his eighteenth year he was articled to an attorney in 
London, in whose office he had for companion the future 
Lord Chancellor Thurlow. For the study or the practice of 



WILLIAM COWPER I73 

law, however, lie had no hereditary or original aptitude; 
and though duly called to the bar in his twenty-third year, 
it was with a full consciousness of time misspent in the 
frivolous amusements of a young man, or misdirected from 
professional preparation to literary trifling, or at best to a 
continuation of classical study. It was now he fell in love 
with his cousin Theodora Cowper ; but the young lady's 
father interposed to prevent any engagement. Theodora 
remained unmarried for his sake, and was the anonymous 
donor of many a gracefully bestowed benefit to the poet in 
after-life. At the age of thirty -two he found himself a 
briefless barrister, with but a slender patrimony (his father 
had died in 1756), and no prospects of success beyond 
the influence of family connections. Through this in- 
fluen'ce he was offered the clerkship of the Journals in the 
House of Lords, which he accepted; but finding that he 
was expected to appear for examination before the Lords, 
he shrank from the ordeal, and, sinking into despondency, 
sought the sad refuge of suicide as the only escape from a 
morbid sense of incapacity and disgrace. The rash attempt 
ended his professional career and threw him out of active 
life. Friends hurried him from London to a private asylum 
at St. Albans, where, after repeated fits of insanity, as the 
recollection of his ruined hopes returned to his mind, he 
became religious and reconciled to his fate. 

With the pecuniary assistance of his relatives he settled 
in Huntingdon, where he made the acquaintance of the 
Unwin family, and by-and-by removed with them to the 
village of Olney, in Buckinghamshire. His career as a poet 
is identified with his residence here. Country walks, garden- 
ing, " books and music and the poet's toil " were his occu- 
pations; he also amused himself by keeping tame hares; 
but ever and again a mysterious melancholy descended upon 
his mind, and, while leaving his intellect unimpaired, para- 
lyzed his energies and made him supremely miserable. The 
cheerful companionship of Lady Austen and his cousin 
Lady Hesketh, sister of Theodora, for a time dispelled the 
gloom ; but it was Cowper's misfortune to be too frequently 



174 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

left to himself, or to the well-meant but unhappy influence 
of the Rev. John Newton. It was with Newton, who had 
been a slave-trader in his youth, that he wrote the Olney 
Hymns, published in 1799. Mrs. Unwin, the gentle and un- 
wearied friend of the latter half of his life, encouraged him, 
chiefly by way of mental diversion, to attempt poetry on a 
larger scale ; and to her we owe what may be called his 
Moral Satires, all written in the measure and somewhat in the 
manner of Pope, and including as the best of the series the 
pieces on Truth, Retirement, and Conversation. The Satires 
appeared in 1782, when Oowper was already over fifty, and 
though they won a kind word from Johnson, can hardly be 
said to have drawn public attention. They were written too 
much under the severe eye of Newton. 

Cowper was by no means depressed by their failure, and 
cheerfully undertook The Task at the suggestion of Lady 
Austen, who gave him "The Sofa" as an opening subject. 
Adopting blank-verse, he wrote with a free and unaffected 
pen a succession of six charming poems, familiarly and dis- 
cursively descriptive of his rural walks and fireside joys at 
Olney. " The whole," in Cowper's own words, " has one 
tendency, to discountenance the modern enthusiasm after a 
London life, and to recommend rural ease and leisure as 
friendly to the cause of piety and virtue." " God made 
the country and man made the town " is the motto-line of 
The Task. The poetical genius of Cowper is thus in com- 
plete contrast to that of Pope, who turned his back on the 
country and directed his observation to city life ; it agrees 
so far with that of Thomson, who preferred the country to 
the town, but, unlike Cowper, did not seek to shut the town 
out of the landscape. Even in the country Cowper's range 
is narrower than Thomson's ; but his work as a descrip- 
tive writer has this peculiar recommendation, that his scenes 
and his peasants are always genuinely English, and are ac- 
curately drawn from actual observation. To Lady Austen 
also we owe the humorous ballad of John Gilpin, and the 
Lines on the Loss of the Royal George. 

The Task appeared in 1785, and at once made Cowper fa- 



WILLIAM COWPER I75 

mous. It surrounded liim with friends new and old. Tlmr- 
low wrote to compliment him ; Lady Hasketli came to see 
bim. Mrs. Unwin and the poet now removed to a more 
cheerful residence at Weston, in the same neighborhood, 
where they were drawn into closer relations with the Throck- 
mortons, a Roman Catholic family, to whom the manor be- 
longed. To Mr. Throckmorton Cowper was indebted for 
the privilege of free access to the grounds of Weston Hall. 
Cowper was now happier than he had been since he left 
Westminster. It was now, having got The T^a^Ar successfully 
off his hands, he luxuriated in the production of those short 
popular poems which he wrote with such charming ease. 
They include complimentary verses to Mrs. Throckmorton, 
turned with infinite grace ; humorous verses on the small 
incidents of domestic life, such as the Ode to Apollo and The 
Colubriad ; the stanzas which describe the solitude of the 
marooned seaman ; anapaestic lines on the Poplar Field^ etc. 
Unhappily for the cause of poetry, Cowper turned from the 
composition of occasional pieces to the translation of Homer. 
His version, which is in blank-verse, and, though less popu- 
lar, more scholarly than Pope's, was published in 1791. A 
visit to the Sussex coast with Mrs. Unwin, then suffering 
from paralysis ; a pension of £300 a year from the govern- 
ment in 1794; removal from Weston to East Dereham, in 
Norfolk ; the death of Mrs. Unwin ; and the recurrence of 
the old malady in greater force than ever — mark the closing 
years of the life of Cowper. Two small poems, among the most 
pathetic in the language, the tender lines To Mary, and the 
tragic verses of The Castaway, were written during this 
period ; the latter was his last original composition, and 
shows his poetical faculty still unimpaired. He survived 
Mrs. Unwin three years and a half. 

To a love of nature for her own sake, Cowper added ex- 
treme sensibility to the sufferings of animals. His sympa- 
thies with the industrious poor " that scorn to beg," his 
hatred of oppression and the Bastille way of government, 
his advocacy of the slave, and the high moral tone of his 
teaching are features of the poetical work of Cowper. His 



176 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

style is full of idiomatic grace, clear, sensible, and copious 
without redundancy. His verse is wonderfully varied and 
often melodious— a result attained in part by a liberal use of 
unconventional language ; yet he is neither pedantic nor vul- 
gar. In all he writes there is the presence of a well-bred 
personality, which gives a charm to his words even when 
one dissents from his opinion. With sense, wit, pathos, and 
playful humor at will, Cowper's deficiency is in passion. As 
a prose writer he merits high praise. His Letters are the 
best in the language. 

' ' Come, Evening, once again, season of peace ! 
Return, sweet Evening, and continue long ! 
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west 
With matron step slow moving, while the Night 
Treads on thy sweeping train ; one hand employed 
In letting fall the curtain of repose 
On bird and beast, the other charged for man 
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day: 
Not sumptuously adorned, not needing aid. 
Like homely -featured Night, of clustering gems; 
A star or two, just twinkling on thy brow. 
Suffices thee ; save that the moon is thine 
No less than hers, not worn indeed on high 
With ostentatious pageantry, but set 
With modest grandeur in thy purple zone. 
Resplendent less, but of an ampler round. 
Come then, and thou shalt find thy votary calm. 
Or make me so. Composure is thy gift : 
And whether I devote thy gentle hours 
To books, to music, or the poet's toil ; 
To weaving nets for bird-alluring fruit ; 
Or twining silken threads round ivory reels, 
When they command whom man was born to please, 
I slight thee not, but make thee welcome still." 

—The Task. 

" My mother ! when I learned that thou wast dead, 
Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
Hovered thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? 
Perhaps thou gav'st me, though unfelt, a kiss ; 
Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss — 
Ah, that maternal smile ! it answers, Yes. 



WILLIAM COWPER l7V 

I heard the bell tolled on thj^ funeral day, 
I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
And, turning from my nursery window, drew 
A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu !" 

— Oa Receipt of Ids Mother's Picture. 

"I am monarch of all I survey. 

My right there is none to dispute ! 
From the centre all round to the sea, 
I am lord of the fowl and the brute. 

Solitude ! where are the charms 
That sages have seen in thy face ? 

Better dwell in the midst of alarms, 
Than reign in this horrible place. 

1 am out of humanity's reach, 

I must finish my journey alone. 
Never hear the sweet music of speech — 

I start at the sound of my own. . . . 
Ye winds that have made me your sport, 

Convey to this desolate shore 
Some cordial endearing report 

Of a land I shall visit no more. 
My friends, do they now and then send 

A wish or a thought after me ? 
O tell me I yet have a friend. 

Though a friend I am never to see." 

—Lines supposed to be written hy Alexander Selkirk. 

" Obscurest night involved the sky; 
The Atlantic billows roared 
When such a destined wretch as I, 
Washed headlong from on board, 
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
His floating home forever left. . . . 

*' No voice divine the storm allayed, 
No light propitious shone ; 
When, snatched from all effectual aid, 

We perished, each alone: 
But I beneath a rougher sea, 
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he." 

— The Castaway. 

" Oh, happy shades— to me unblessed ! 
Friendly to peace, but not to me ! 

12 



178 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

How ill the scene that offers rest 

And heart that cannot rest agree ! 
This glassy stream, that spreading pine, 

Those alders quivering to the breeze, 
Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine, 

And please, if anything could please. 
But fix'd unalterable Care 

Foregoes not what she feels within. 
Shows the same sadness everywhere. 

And slights the season and the scene. 
For all that pleased in wood or lawn. 

While Peace possessed these silent bowers, 
Her animating smile withdrawn. 

Has lost its beauties and its powers. 
The saint or moralist should tread 

This moss-grown alley, musing slow ; 
They seek like me the secret shade. 

But not like me to nourish woe ! 
Me fruitful scenes and prospects waste 

Alike admonish not to roam ; 
These tell me of enjoyment past, 

And those of sorows yet to come." 

— The 8hruhhery. 

" None here is happy but in part ; 
Full bliss is bliss divine ; 
There dwells some wish in every heart, 
And doubtless one in thine. 

" That wish, on some fair future day 
Which Fate shall brightly gild 
('Tis blameless, be it what it may,) 
I wish it all fulfilled." 
^The Poefs Hew- Year's Gift io Mrs. Tlirockmorton. 

No poet, whatever his race or age, has so completely won 
the affection and proud admiration of his countrymen as 
Robert Bums (1759-1796). For quite a century his name 
has been a household word, and his poetry a powerful reality 
wherever the Scottish language is intelligible. Yet the cir- 
cumstances of his life — his lowly origin, brief and irregu- 
lar education, continual toil and poverty, and early death — 
were all against the manifestation of his genius. 

He was the eldest of a family of seven children born to 



ROBERT BURNS IV9 

William Burns, a struggling and unsuccessful crofter origi- 
nally from Forfarshire, and Agnes Brown, his wife. The 
house in which the poet was born was a clay habitation by 
the wayside about two miles from the town of Ayr ; and the 
school he attended during the brief years of childhood was 
a similar hut beside it. His attendance at this school ceased 
before he was twelve ; whatever scant instruction he re- 
ceived at a school after this was for the special object of 
improving his penmanship, or acquiring some knowledge of 
French or mensuration. At school he read the Bible, and 
specimens of the verse and prose of the reign of Queen 
Anne. Addison was the first poet to make music in his 
boyish ear ; and it was Addison's Vision of Mirza that first 
awoke him to a sense of the beauty of prose. But Burns 
was self-taught, and read, with some direction from his 
father, whatever books he could borrow. At fifteen he was 
doing a man's work on his father's small farm, and inclined 
to rebel against the drudgery, solitude, and hopelessness of 
his lot. A morbid sense that he was "the most ungainly, 
awkward being in the parish" drove him to a dancing- 
school, contrary to his father's wishes ; and he presently 
won a reputation among his rustic acquaintances for socia- 
bility, learning, and wit. He had already begun to write 
verses, his first attempt being a song about a country lass 
who had been his partner in the harvest-field. He was still 
reading, but now only books of poetry. Shakespeare, Pope, 
Shenstone, and Allan Ramsay were devoured with the same 
relish. Goldsmith and Fergusson were prime favorites. In 
1780 he founded a social club at Tarbolton, and the year 
after joined a Masonic lodge, and wrote his first perfect 
lyric of Mary Morison. 

It was now (1781) that he tried to escape from farm 
bondage by turning bis attention to flax-dressing, at Irvine, 
on the Ayrshire coast. But his mill was burned down, and 
the penniless poet went back in 1782 to the labor of the 
farm. Gloomy days followed. His father died, prema- 
turely old and a bankrupt. In 1784 the poet and his 
younger brother took a lease of the farm of Mossgiel, near 



180 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1G60-1789 

Mauchline, in Ayrshire ; but the want of money, a succes- 
sion of bad harvests, and an unfortunate amour wrecked his 
hopes and his peace of mind, and lie resolved to emigrate. 
Before departing lie published at Kilmarnock, in 1786, a 
collection of Scottish poems, most of which were written 
after he had made up his mind to emigrate. 178G was his 
most productive year; between the 1st of January and the 
end of July of that year he was producing upon an average 
five pieces per week, many of whicli — sucli as The Twa 
DoffSy The Vision, Address to the Unco Guid, The Holy 
Fair, To a Mountain Daisy — are among his best works. 
But he had already written The Jolly Beggars and The 
Cotter'' s Saturday Night. The book was to keep his name 
in mind when he was in Jamaica, and if it sold was to buy 
his passage. It was sold off within a month, and yielded a 
profit of £20. At the last moment he was advised to try a 
second edition in Edinburgh. He went to Edinburgh, where 
he stayed from November, 1786, till May, 1788. This long 
interval of idleness was varied by excursions to the Border 
and the llighlands. 

In Edinburgh Burns was welcomed by all classes of so- 
ciety, and conducted himself with a manliness and spirit 
which won the admiration of all. The first to introduce 
him to tlie literary world of Edinburgh was Uenry Macken- 
zie, who, by a criticism of his poems in The Lounger, pro- 
claimed his originality, and drew attention to liis genius. 
When the Edinburgh edition of his poems appeared in 
1787 it was speedily exhausted, and reprinted twice in the 
same year. Besides establishing the fame of Burns as one 
of the leading poets of the century, and probably the best 
that Scotland had produced, it benefited him to the extent 
of £500. It was in Edinburgh that the famous meeting of 
Burns and Scott took place. Scott was then a lad of fifteen, 
and many years afterwards wrote an account of his im- 
pression of Burns. He remembered his strong and robust 
build, and the sense and shrewdness which were powerfully 
expressed in all his lineaments. " His eye alone," wrote 
Scott, " indicated the poetical character and temperament. 



ROBERT BURNS 181 

It was large, and of a dark cast, and literally glowed when 
he spoke with feeling or interest. I never saw such another 
eye in a human head, though I have seen the most distin- 
guished men of my time." It was in Edinburgh, too, that he 
met Mrs. M'Lehose, the Clarinda of his correspondence, and 
the heroine of some very impassioned love-songs. His visit 
to Edinburgh was the turning-point of Burns's life. It did 
him both harm and good. The chief harm it did was to 
unfit him for the inevitable return to a life of rural indus- 
try ; but it widened his knowledge of society, and impressed 
on his mind the striking contrast between rich and poor, 
against which he was afterwards so eloquently to protest in 
A Mail's a Man for a' That. 

The summer of 1788 found Burns settled in the farm 
of Ellisland, some five miles up the Nith from Dumfries. 
Hither he brought his wife, Jean Armour, the " bonny Jean " 
of his songs, and made a sincere efi^ort to practise regular 
industry and the rural virtues. At first he seemed to suc- 
ceed, and the first year or two of his married life was prob- 
ably the happiest he had known or was to know. He had 
a nicely-situated and well-stocked farm, an affectionate wife, 
kindly neighbors, and a generous landlord. He was, be- 
sides, free of debt, and full of poetical hopes and plans. 
Here he wrote To Mary in Heaven — one of the tenderest 
of his serious love-songs — and the tale of Tarn o' Shanter, 
popularly regarded as the best and most humorous of his 
poems. Unfortunately, as it proved, he accepted an ap- 
pointment in the Excise towards the end of 1789. The 
salary was £50, and never rose above £70. Its recommen- 
dation to Burns was its certainty, and some hope of prefer- 
ment. But the duties of his new office broke in upon the 
regular labor of the farm, and led him into habits of indis- 
criminate conviviality. At last he threw up his farm, and 
went, in 1791, to live in the town of Dumfries, where he 
was entirely dependent on his office in the Excise. His 
duties confined him to the port, and he found himself cut 
off from the wholesome and inspiring influences of solitude 
and nature. A democrat by nature, he now began to give 



182 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

imprndent expression to his political opinions. For this he 
was reprimanded by the Board of Excise. He began to 
lose his friends, to fall into dissipated habits, to lose his 
self-respect, his health, and hope. He died in the middle of 
his thirty-eighth year, July 21, 1796. His principal poems 
during his residence in Dumfries were Scots Wha Hae and 
A Man's a Man for a' That — the latter written the year be- 
fore his death. 

Both the life and the poetry of Burns may be regarded as 
a protest against the sombreness and narrowness of the Scot- 
tish Calvinism of his day. His gospel was one of joy and 
hope, his prophecy the brotherhood of mankind. It was 
only in passing moments of despondent weakness that man 
seemed to him made to mourn. 

Versatility of imagination, vigor of expression, and utter 
veracity of description, whether the theme is emotional or 
material, are the prime features of the poetical art of Burns. 
In song he is matchless. Here his theme is mainly love, 
and the treatment of it mainly passionate. To this class 
of his lyrics belong Mary Morison, Of a' the Airts, Sweet 
Afton, Highland Mary, A Red Red Rose, and many others. 
His satire is as strong as his song is sweet. It is mainly 
directed against hypocrisy in religious profession, as in Holy 
Willie'' s Prayer and The Address to the Unco Guid. His 
humor, which ranges from playful badinage to rattling fun, 
and is often dashed with sublimity, horror, or pathos, is well 
displayed in The Address to the Deil, Tarn o' Shanter, The 
Jolly Beggars, and The Holy Fair. His tenderness and sym- 
pathy towards all creatures are visible in A Winter Night, 
the Address to the Mountain Daisy, and To the Field Mouse. 
His graphic power in describing natural and social scenes is 
shown in The Cotter'' s Saturday Night, The Brigs of Ayr, 
The Twa Bogs, and Halloioeen. Burns found themes for 
poetry in his daily intercourse with man and nature. No 
subject was too humble for his muse. He was eminently 
patriotic, yet his sympathies were not confined to Scotland. 
He is the poet of common humanity, whose everyday toil, 
joys, sorrows, and aspirations he glorified by his song. The 



ROBERT BURNS 183 

spontaneity of his songs ; their warmth, purity, and fresh- 
ness ; their melody and directness of appeal, were qualities 
which had long been absent from lyrical poetry. Song 
"gushed from his lieart, as rain from the clouds of summer, 
or tears from the eyelids start." 

"What tho", like commoners of air, 
We vvauder out, we know not where, 

But either house or hall ? 
Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, 
The sweeping vales, an' foaming floods. 

Are free alike to all. 
In days when daisies deck the ground, 

And blackbirds whistle clear. 
With honest joy our hearts will bound 
To see the coming year : 
On braes when we please, then. 

We'll sit an' sowth ' a tune ; ' hum, or 

Syne rhyme till't, we'll time till't, whistle low 

And siug't when we hae done. 

"It's no in titles nor in rank; 
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 

To purchase peace and rest; 
It's no in makin' muckle mair '•^ ; ^ much moi'e 

It's no in books; it's no in lear,^ ^learning 

To make us truly blest: 
If happiness hae not her seat 

An' centre in the breast, 
We may be wise, or rich, or great, 
But never can be blest : 
Nae treasures, nor pleasures. 

Could make us happy lang ; 
The heart's aye the part aye 
That makes us right or wrang." 

— Epistle to Davie, 



"Whyles owre a linn the burnie plays, 

As through the glen it wimpl't; 
Whyles round a rocky scaur ^ it strays, * cliff 

Whyles in a wiel^ it dimpl't; ^pool 

Whyles glitter'd to the nightly rays, 

Wi' bickerin', daucin' dazzle ; 



184 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Whyles cookit ^ underneath the braes, ' hid and peeped 
Below the spreading hazle. 

Unseen that night." 

— Halloween. 

" Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, 
An' weary winter comin' fast, 
And cozie here, beneath the blast. 

Thou thought to dwell. 
Till crash! the cruel coulter past, 
• Out thro' thy cell. 

" That wee bit heap o' leaves and stibble 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble ! 
Now thou's turned out for a' thy trouble, 

But''^ house or hald, ^without 

To thole the winter's sleety dribble. 

An' cranreuch ^ cauld ! -^ hoarfrost 

" But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane^ "^ alone 

In proving foresight may be vain ; 
The best-laid schemes o' mice and men 

Gang aft a-gley,^ ^ off the right line 

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain 

For promised joy. 

" Still thou art blest, compared wi' me 1 
The present only toucheth thee ; 
But och! I backward cast my ee 

On prospects drear; 
An' forward, though I canna see, 
I guess an' fear." 

— To a Mouse. 

** Then gently scan your brother man, 

Still gentler sister woman; 
Tho' they may gang a kennin^ wrang, ^ a small 

To step aside is human : degree 

One point must still be greatly dark, 

The moving why they do it! 
And just as lamely can ye mark 

How far perhaps they rue it. 

" Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
Decidedly can try us ; 



ROBERT BURNS 185 

He knows each cord — its various tone, 

Each spring — its various bias: 
Then at the balance let's be mute, 

We never can adjust it ; 
What's done we partly may compute, 

But know not what's resisted." 

— Address to tlie Unco Guid. 

"O Mary, at thy window be — 

It is the wished, the trysted hour! 
Those smiles and glances let me see, 

That make the miser's treasure poor. 

How blythely wad I bide the stoure, 
A weary slave frae sun to sun. 

Could I the rich reward secure — 
The lovely Mary Morison. 

** Yestreen, when to the trembling string 

The dance gaed^ thro' the lighted ha', ^went 
To thee my fancy took its wing — 

I sat, but neither heard nor saw. 

Though this was fair, and that was braw, 
And yon the toast of a' the toun, 

I sighed, and said amang them a', 
'Ye are na Mary Morison.' 

*' Oh, Mary, canst thou wreck his peace 
Wha for thy sake wad gladly dee ? 
Or canst thou break that heart of his, 
Whase only faut is loving thee? 
If love for love thou wilt na gie, 
At least be pity to me shown ; 
A thought ungentle canna be 
The thought o' Mary Morison." 

— Mary Morison. 

"That sacred hour can I forget? 

Can I forget the hallowed grove. 
Where, by the winding Ayr, we met. 

To live one day of parting love ? . . . 
Ayr, gurgling, kissed his pebbled shore, 

O'erhung with wild-woods, thickening green ; 
The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar 

Twined amorous round the raptured scene; 
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest; 

The birds sang love on every spray ; 



186 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Till too, too soon the glowing west 
Proclaimed the speed of winged day. 

Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes, 
And fondly broods with miser care; 

Time but th' impression stronger makes, 
As streams their channels deeper wear." 

— To Mary in Heaven. 

OTHER rOETS 

To Edmund Waller (1605-1687) belongs the credit, not of invent- 
ing, but of introducing the heroic couplet as the popular vehicle 
of serious poetry, and of instituting by his peculiar use of it a new 
kind of English verse. If Dryden established and Pope perfected 
the artificial or classical school, AValler founded it; and this he 
did independently of French influence, and before French literary 
taste had begun to act on English style. He may fairly be regard- 
ed as the first in time of our writers of modern verse. 

Waller was born in Hertfordshire ; w^as of kin to both Cromwell 
and Hampden ; and owned rich estates in the county of Bucking- 
ham. His political and his poetical career began together. He 
was only eighteen when he first entered Parliament, and in the 
same year he appears to have written in couplets of remarkable 
smoothness his first poem, on a subject connected with the return 
of Prince Charles from Spain. In politics he was an unprincipled 
time-server, shifting from Roundhead to Royalist when the change 
seemed to answer his purpose. In 1644, for his share in a plot to 
aid the king, he was apprehended by the party to which lie nom- 
inally belonged, fined £10,000, and confined for a year. He next 
went to France, but returning ten years later he wTote tw^o pane- 
gyrics, one on Cromw^ell living, the other on Cromw^ell dead; 
and yet was ready at the Restoration with a poetical welcome to 
Charles II. "When he presented this poem to the king, his maj- 
esty said he thought it much inferior to his Panegyric on Crom- 
well. ' Sir,' replied Mr. Waller, ' we poets never succeed so well 
in Avriting truth as in fiction.' " Waller's verse consists almost en- 
tirely of short occasional pieces, but as these are numerous, and 
were spread over many years— for lie went on writing till he was 
eighty — the influence of his style on contemporary verse was on 
that account more continuous, and therefore greater. The best of 
his poetry consists of the amatory lyrics to Saccharissa (Lady Dor- 
othy Sidney, daughter of the Earl of Leicester). He was about 
eighty when he wrote his Divine Poems, the most ambitious of 
which — Of Divine Love — is in six short cantos. Waller was mas- 
ter of a variety of measures ; but the style in all is the same — cor- 



OTHER POETS 187 

rect and elegant, if somewhat cold. Good specimens of his lighter 
vein are tlie lines '' On a Girdle," and the song " Go, Lovely Hose.'' 
His graver style is well exemplified in the Epilogue or I'Envoi of 
his Divine Poems, concluding thus : 

" The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, 
Lets in new light, thro' chinks that time has made ; 
Stronger by weakness, wiser, men become, 
As they draw near to their eternal home. 
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view, 
That stand upon the threshold of the new." 

The son of a Worcestershire yeoman, Samuel Butler (1612-1680) 
was partly educated at Worcester Grammar School, and partly 
self-taught while acting in the capacity of clerk or tutor to va- 
rious Presbyterian families during the period of Puritan ascen- 
denc3^ In their service he had ample means of remarking the 
many disagreeable oddities of character and conduct which dis- 
tinguished the Puritan party from the Cavaliers. His sympathies 
w^ere with the Royalists ; but these he was obliged to conceal, 
consoling himself in the meantime with a purpose of publicly 
satirizing the whole hateful sect — for such he regarded them — 
when opportunity should offer. The opportunity came with the 
Restoration, and in 1663 appeared the first part of Hudibras, 
probably the wittiest and longest burlesque in the language. Sir 
Hudibras, from whom the poem is named, is a kind of puritanic 
Don Quixote, who " rides forth a-colonelling." He is supposed 
to typify the leaders of the Puritan party. The portrait is a cari- 
cature of Sir Samuel Luke, one of Cromwell's oflicers, in whose 
house in Bedfordshire Butler had for some years found uncon- 
genial employment. The learning of the poem is evident on 
every page, while the wit, which wearies at last from its prof use- 
ness, and disgusts too often from its unfairness, owes much of its 
force to the ease and originality of the rhymes. Butler himself 
never shared in the popularity of his poem. The king quoted it, 
but neglected the author. A soured and disappointed man, he 
died at last as meanly as he had lived before the publication of 
his lampoon rescued his name from obscurity. His own lines 
illustrate his success in life : 

"Success ! the mark no mortal wit 
Or surest hand can always hit : 
For, whatsoe'er we perpetrate, 
We do but row — we're steered by fate ; 
Which in success oft disinherits, 
For spurious causes, noblest merits." 



188 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Only, while his merits were many and great, they were not the 
noblest. 

An important link, connecting Dryden with Waller in the mat- 
ter of style, is Sir John Denham (1615-1688). Denham was born 
in Dublin, but educated at Oxford. When the Civil War broke 
out he attached himself to the Royalists, and gave the same ser- 
vice to the king as Cowley gave to the queen — deciphering the 
royal correspondence. After the Restoration he was knighted, 
and appointed, in succession to Inigo Jones, surveyor-general of 
the king's buildings. His successor was Sir Christopher Wren. 
Denham's youth was dissolute, and his later years were darkened 
by insanity. He is memorable for Cooper's Hill, a topographical 
poem — the first of its kind — descriptive of the view of London, 
Windsor, and the Thames valley, running to about one hundred 
and fifty heroic couplets, and concluding with an account of a 
stag-hunt. The gem of the piece is the apostrophe to the river : 

" O could I flow like thee, and make thy stream 
My great example, as it is my theme ! 
Tho' deep, yet clear; tho' gentle, yet not dull; 
Strong without rage; without o'erflowing, full." 

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), the youngest child, born posthu- 
mously, of a London shopkeeper, was educated first at Westmin- 
ster, afterwards at Cambridge, and finally at Oxford. Oxford was 
the headquarters of the Cavaliers when the Civil War was im- 
pending ; and thither young Cowley, being a Royalist, naturally 
turned on his ejection from Cambridge. After the defeat of 
Charles at Naseby he followed the queen to France, where he was 
employed in deciphering the royal correspondence, till the execu- 
tion of the king in 1649. He continued to live abroad in the ser- 
vice of the exiled Stuarts till 1656. The Restoration came, and 
Cowley expected and deserved to be rewarded ; but was forced 
to content himself with a grant of a lease of lands at Chertsey. 
Here, in the retirement of a country life, to which he had always 
been inclined, and " in no inglorious ease" — for he had worked long 
and loyally for an ungrateful party — he hoped to enjoy in peace 
the sweets of solitude and study. The fulfilment of his hopes 
began badly: " The first night that I came hither," he wrote, un- 
der date May 21, 1665, "I caught so great a cold as made me 
keep my chamber for ten days ; and, two after, had such a bruise 
on my ribs with a fall that I am yet unable to move or turn my- 
self in bed. Besides, I can get no money from my tenants, and 
have my meadows eaten up every night by cattle put in by my 
neighbors." Two years and two months after thus writing to his 
friend Dr. Sprat, Cowley was dead; but he had found time dur- 



OTHER POETS 189 

ing his country life, at Cliertsey, or at Barn Elms, to compose 
those beautiful prose Essays— some ten or twelve only in all — for 
which, rather than for his poetry, he is now chiefly read, if not 
remembered. 

Cowley early began to write verses. In one of the best of his 
Essays— 0/J/?/.sY'//— he tells with the unaffected frankness of Mon- 
taigne how he became a poet : " I believe I can tell the particular 
little chance that filled my head first with such chimes of verse as 
have never since left ringing there ; for I remember when I began 
to read, and to take some pleasure in it, there was wont to lie in 
my mother's parlor (I know not by what accident, for she herself 
never in her life read any book but of devotion), but there was 
wont to lie Spenser's works. This I happened to fall upon, and 
was infinitely delighted with the stories of the knights and giants 
and monsters and brave houses which I found everywhere there 
(though my understanding had little to do with all this), and by 
degrees with the tinkling of the rhyme and dance of the numbers, 
so that I think I had read him all over before I was twelve years 
old, and was thus irremediably made a poet." At fifteen he was 
the author of a published volume of verse, entitled Poetical Blos- 
soms; to which, before he was twenty, he added another volume 
of poetry, and Love's Riddle, a play. He was engaged in writing 
his Love verses during the early years of the Civil War, and con- 
tinued their composition in France, where he came under Waller's 
influence : they appeared with the title of The Mistress in 1647, 
and are memorable as showing his style in the transitional stage, 
wdiich connects him with the older romantic school of poetry on 
the one side and the new critical school on the other. In 1656 ap- 
peared his Pindaric Odes, falsely so called, and four books — all 
that he wrote — of an unfinished epic in heroics, intended for his 
masterpiece. The Davideis. Fancy and intellect are more conspic- 
uous in the poetry of Cowley than imagination or passion. His 
quaint expressions and far-fetched metaphors, in a word his 
*' conceits," cumber and disfigure his lines. If the poet is read at 
all now, it is for such sprightly trifles as The Chronicle, a review 
of his sweethearts, and such pensive memorial verses as the Elegy 
on the Death of William Hervey or his eulogy of Richard Crashaw. 
The latter shows genuine feeling : 

" Poet and Saint ! to thee alone are given 
The two most sacred names of earth and heaven ; 
The hard and rarest union that can be, 
Next that of Godhead with humanity. . . . 
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might 
Be wrong ; his life, I'm sure, was in the right ; 



190 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

And I myself a Catholic ^vill be 

So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee!" 

Better known for his prose than for his poetry, but best known 
for his incorruptible patriotism, Andrew Marvell (1620-1678) de- 
serves much more regard for his poetry than is generally allotted 
him. Son of a Hull clergyman, he was educated at Cambridge ; 
visited the Continent ; was for two or three years tutor to Mary, 
daughter of General Fairfax ; became in 1657, on Milton's own 
recommendation, assistant secretary to the government of Crom- 
well ; represented Hull iu the Restoration Parliament, and resisted 
the bribery and flattery of Charles XL, preferring the independence, 
though meagre, of a member's pay, with freedom to flagellate in- 
iquity in high places. His poetry shows two very different as- 
pects. Prior to the Restoration it is mostly lyrical, and reveals a 
fine feeling for Nature with Wordsworthian touches; after that 
event it is satirical on the subject of vice and tyranny in Church 
and State, and occasionally as fierce, and even as coarse, as the in- 
vectives of Juvenal, It was Marvell's style of satire, the regular 
heroic couplet, that Dryden adopted, in preference to Donne's or 
Butler's. His ablest satires are Last Instructions to a Painter, and 
The Character of Holland; of his lyrical pieces, The Emigrants in 
the Bermudas, Thoughts in a Garden, and the girl's lament for her 
dead fawn are exquisite examples. No more startling contrast in 
a poet's work could be offered than the following lines show be- 
side certain passages that might be culled from the satires of Mar- 
vell : 

* ' The wanton troopers riding by 

Have shot my fawn, and it will die. 

Ungentle men ! They cannot thrive 

Who killed thee. . . . 
It had so sweet a breath ! and oft 

I blushed to see its foot more soft 

And white — shall I say than my hand ? 

Than any lady's in the land ! . . . 

''With what a pretty skipping grace 
It oft would challenge me the race ; 
And when't had left me far away, 
'Twould stay, and run again, and stay. . . . 

I have a garden of my own, 
But so with lilies overgrown 
And roses that you would it guess 
To be a little wilderness : 
Among the beds of lilies I 
Have sought it oft — where it should lie ; 



OTHER POETS 191 

Yet could not, till itself would rise, 
Find it, although before mine eyes." 

The first in time, and even yet one of the most brilliant and easy, 
of writers of that kind of poetry which, originating in France, is 
known as i;ers cle societe, was Matthew Prior (1664-1721). He was 
born of humble parentage in Dorsetshire, but was indebted to an 
uncle, the keeper of a tavern in London, for an excellent educa- 
tion at Westminster School. The Earl of Dorset, it is said, found 
him reading Horace in his uncle's tavern, and sent him to Cam- 
bridge, where in due time he became a fellow of John's College. 
While still a student he became acquainted with Charles Montague, 
and wrote, conjointly with him, that happy burlesque of Dryden's 
Hind and Panther — The Toicn Mouse and the Country Mouse. He 
was then twenty -three. Through the influence of the Earl of 
Dorset he was appointed to various offices in the diplomatic service 
of the Whigs, acting now as secretary to ambassadors and now as 
ambassador-iu -chief, and by his own geniality and tact maintaining 
the position to the satisfaction of the government. In 1701 he 
entered Parliament, and shifted to the Tory side. In 1711 he was 
again employed on an embassy to France, and being suspected of 
a treasonable intrigue with the agents of Louis, was, on his return 
to London in 1715, put in prison by the Whigs for two years. It 
was fault enough that along with Bolingbroke he had negotiated 
the unpopular Treaty of Utrecht. On his liberation he lived on 
his fellowship and by the proceeds of his published verse. In 
1709 he had brought out the first collected edition of his poems, 
prefaced by a noble Dedication in prose to the young Earl of Dor- 
set, the son of his patron. Ten years later he issued a folio edition 
to subscribers, and realized four thousand guineas by the sale. 
This sura, augmented by gifts from his aristocratic admirers, was 
sufficient to keep him in comfort for the short remainder of his life. 

Of all the artificial poets Prior writes with the greatest ease. 
He is especially clever as a raconteur in verse. His epigrams have 
point and finish. Of his many light lyrics, the Better Ansicer to 
Cloe Jealous shows him in his happiest and most characteristic vein : 

"What I speak, my fair Cloe, and what I write, shows 
The difference there is betwixt Nature and art : 
I court others in verse, but I love thee in prose ; 
And they have my whimsies, but thou hast my heart. . . , 

" So when I am wearied with wand'ring all day, 
To thee, my delight, in the evening I come: 
No matter what beauties I saw on my way — 
They were but my visits, but thou art my home. 



192 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1600-1789 

*' Then finish, dear Cloe, this pastoral war ; 
And let us like Horace and Lydia agree ; 
For thou art a girl as much brighter than her, 
As he was a poet sublimer than me." 

Style and humor are happily blended in his Ballad of the TJiief 
and the Cordelier. His odes and his translations show him as the 
court poet and the -scholar respectively. His most ambitious at- 
tempts are his Alma and his Solomon — the former a conversation 
in three Hudibrastic cantos on the Progress of the Mind, between 
Matthew and Richard ; the latter a monologue by King Solomon, 
in three books of heroic verse, on the themes of Knowledge, 
Pleasure, and Power. Solomon he regarded as his masterpiece ; 
probably only two lines of it live to-day : 

" Abra was ready ere I called her name, 
And, tho' I called another, Abra. came." 

Born of English parents of easy means in Dublin, and educated 
at Trinity College, Thomas Parnell (1679-1718) entered the Church, 
and was Archdeacon of Clogher when his countryman Swift intro- 
duced him to Harley, Earl of Oxford, and to Pope. The death 
of Queen Anne ruined his hopes of preferment as a preacher in 
London ; and falling into intemperance of wine through domestic 
losses, he was retiring to Ireland, where by Swift's influence he 
had been appointed vicar of Finglass in the diocese of Dublin, 
when he died at Chester on the way in his thirty-ninth year. 
Four years later his works were collected, and for the first time 
published by Pope. When Pope's Odyssey appeared in 1725 the 
Battle of the Frogs and Mice was from Parnell's pen. The poems 
of Parnell include The Hermit, a narrative poem in limpid heroic 
couplets, intended to show that God governs his world, working 
out his ends by secondary means ; a Night Piece, of some origi- 
nality of thought ; and a Hymn to Contentment, which, as the open- 
ing verses will serve to prove, shows a free and fine management 
of the eight-syllabled measure ; 

"The silent heart which grief assails 
Treads soft and lonesome o'er the vales; 
Sees daisies open, rivers run ; 
And seeks, as I have vainly done, 
Amusing thought; but learns to know 
That solitude's the nurse of woe." 

Edward Young (1681-1765), a son of the rector of Upham in 
Hants, was educated at Winchester and Oxford. His first serious 



OTHER POETS 193 

efforts to satisfy an ambition which in one form or another swayed 
his whole long life were in the tragic drama. Tliese, begin- 
ning with Busiris in 1719, and continued in The Revenge and The 
Brothers, are rhetorical rather than passionate, and were only par- 
tially successful. He next ventured on a political career at forty, 
but failed to find a seat in Parliament. Next he tried satiric 
verse, and between 1725 and 1728 turned off a series of seven 
pieces, to which he gave the collective title of Love of Fame the 
Universal Passion. It was his misfortune that Pope entered the 
arena as Young was leaving it ; The Dunciad threw The Universal 
Passion into oblivion. Near fifty Young took holy orders, and 
was appointed by his college (All-Souls') to the living of Welwyn 
in Hertfordshire. Here he w\as destined to remain for the rest of 
his life, disappointed of the bishopric for which he sighed, but 
partly consoled with the hand and fortune of Lady Elizabeth Lee. 
It was while he was a clergyman that he wrote his worst and his 
best verse. His interminable oceanic odes and sea-pieces show his 
utter destitution of any lyrical power ; but his Complaint, or Night 
Thoughts on Life, Death, and Tmmortality, though far too long (it is 
in nine books of blank-verse of about ten thousand lines), and too 
manifestly tricked out with trope and epigram, is a powerful com- 
position with many effective passages. He was over sixty when he 
began it, and but for it his fame as an author would hardly have 
survived his own generation. The great influence of this poem, 
which was felt at once on its first appearance, is only now dy- 
ing out. The subjoined quotation illustrates the manner of Night 
Thoughts : 

"Procrastination is the thief of time. 
Year after year it steals, till all are fled ; 
And to the mercies of a moment leaves 
The vast concerns of an eternal scene. . . . 
At thirty man suspects himself a fool ; 
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan ; 
At fifty chides his infamous delay, 
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve ; 
In all the magnanimity of thought 
Resolves — and re-resolves ; then dies the same !" 

Allan Ramsay (1686-1758) was born in Leadhills, the highest 
village in Scotland, in the house of his father, the manager of the 
Earl of Hopetoun's lead-mines. At the age of fifteen he was sent 
to Edinburgh, where he became first a wig-maker, and afterwards 
a bookseller. His book-shop was the lounge for the literary wits 
of the northern capital ; and there might now and again be seen 
13 



194 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

the good-humored face of Gay, a summer visitor to Scotland in 
the train of the Duchess of Queensberry. Ramsay had a great ad- 
miration for the English humorist of his time, to whom his own 
joyous nature and Hogarthian delineations of low life were an ad- 
ditional recommendation. His talent for humorous description 
was developed in a local Easy Club ; from the club his verses 
found their way into the town, being hawked about the streets of 
Edinburgh in broadsides at a penny. In 1721 a collection of his 
poems appeared in quarto, which established his reputation as a 
"makar," while it improved his fortunes by about four hundred 
guineas. In 1725 he published what is generally allowed to be 
the best pastoral after Theocritus — The Gentle Shepherd. It is in the 
form of a five-act drama, interspersed with songs ; and is even yet 
more thoroughly and satisfactorily representative of rural life and 
manners than any other poem in the Scottisli language. Ramsay 
did a further service to Scottisli poetry by editing, in 1724, The 
Tea-Table Miscellany and The Evergreen, two collections of national 
verse, mostly lyrical and mostly anonymous. Both Ramsay's life 
and his writings were a protest against the narrowness of Presby. 
teriauism. He scandalized the clergy by building a theatre, and 
by instituting the Circulating Library, through which at a cheap 
rate all the publications of London were introduced to the Edin- 
burgh public. His merit as a poet lies in reviving the traditional 
poetical spirit of his countrymen at a time when it seemed to be 
dying out ; and in preparing the way for Burns, both by creating 
an audience for him, and by indicating for his guidance the tra- 
ditional lines to success of song and humorous story. Ramsay's 
songs, such as Now teat ye wha I met yestreen and Avid Lang Syne 
stand in such natural relation to those of Burns as the green bud 
bears to the glowing blossom. The naturalism of Ramsay, real- 
istic rather than romantic, is well revealed in The Gentle Shep- 
herd : 

"Gae far'er up the burn to Ilabbie's Howe, 
Where a' the sweets o' spring an' simmer grow : 
Between twa birks, out o'er a little lin. 
The water fa's, an' makes a singan din ; 
A pool breast-deep beneath, as clear as glass, 
Kisses, wi' easy whirls, the bord'ring grass. 
We'll end ovir washing while the morning's cool, 
An', when the day grows het, we'll to the pool, 
There wash oursel's — 'tis healthfu' now in May, 
An' sweetly cauler^ on sae warm a day." ^ cool and fresh 

Not the least effective of Ramsay's humorous poems are his con- 
tinuation of James I.'s Chrisfs Kirk on the Green, on the model of 



OTHER POETS 



195 



which Fergusson wrote his Leith liaces and Bums his Holy Fair ; 
and his imitations of Horace, notably his version of the famous 
ninth ode, with the Pentland hills for Soracte : 

"Then fling on coals, an' ripe the ribs,' ^ stir the fire 

An' beek "^ the house baith but an' ben ; ^ keep warm, hake 
That mutchkin-stoup ' — it bauds but dribs,"* ^ pint measure 
Then let's get in the tappit hen.* ... -^ holds only drops 

^ Scots quart 
"Be sure ye dinna quat^ the grip ^quit 

O' ilka joy when ye are young. 
Before auld age your vitals nip. 
An' lay ye twafauld o'er a rung.'"' ''staff 

Born the same year as Pope, John Gay (1688-1732)' had the en- 
viable fortune to be known and loved by all his famous contem- 
poraries, even Pope included. The wonder is the greater that at 
one time Gay's popularity shot up to the height of Pope's. Like 
Prior, however, and not in this respect alone like him. Gay was 
without ambition, and quite disarmed jealousy and rivalry. Pope 
has described him — 

"Of manners gentle, of affections mild; 
In wit a man, simplicity — a child." 

He was of a good but decayed Devonshire family, and was early 
apprenticed to a London silk - mercer. The business was not 
to his liking, and he abandoned it for literature. He first made 
a mark for himself, after two previous attempts at authorship, 
with his Shepherd's Week, a series of pastorals, one for each 
working -day of the week, intended to burlesque the style of 
Ambrose Philips. The verses unexpectedly found favor with 
the public as genuine pastorals, realistically descriptive of Eng- 
lish rustic life. He followed up this success with Trivia, a 
London poem descriptive of the shifting scenery of the streets. 
He next attempted comedy, but unsuccessfully at first ; till 
Swift suggesting that he should try his hand at a Newgate 
pastoral, he produced in 1738 the English opera with which his 
name is now mostly associated. His Fables had begun to appear 
the year before ; Polly, a sequel to The Beggar's Opera, came the 
year after. Those three years were the time when Gay's name 
was as popular as Pope's. They brought him both fame and 
money. Gay spent a large part of his short life a familiar and 
fondled inmate in the houses of people of quality ; latterly he 
lived altogether with the Duke and Duchess of Queensberry. Gay 



196 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

has mucli of the grace and clearness of Prior; he touches a deeper 
lyrical chord in the ballad beginning " 'Twas when the seas were 
roaring," and the song of Black-eyed Susan; and while, like Prior, 
he is the polished and easy-going man about town, unlike Prior he 
has good knowledge of, and genuine love for, external nature. 

"But I, who ne'er was blessed by Fortune's hand. 
Nor brightened ploughshares in paternal land, 
Long in the noisy town have been immured, 
Respired its smoke, and all its cares endured. 
Fatigued at last, a calm retreat I chose. 
And soothed my harassed mind with sweet repose, 
Where fields and shades and the refreshing clime 
Inspire the sylvan song, and prompt my rhyme." 

—Rural Sports (pub. 1713). 

William Collins (1721-1759) was as much neglected in his lifetime 
as he is at present overpraised. Whatever be his position among 
English lyrical poets, there is no doubt that his note is at least 
singularly rich and pure. Johnson, who knew him intimately, 
tells the short and sad story of his life. He was born at Chiches- 
ter, the son of a hatter, and was well educated, first at Winchester 
and afterwards at Oxford. While still an undergraduate he pub- 
lished Persian (or Oriental) Eclogues. "About 1744," says John- 
son, " he came to London a literary adventurer, with many proj- 
ects in his head and very little money in his pocket." Here for 
a few years he led a life of constant toil and great privation, un- 
able, from poverty or irresolution, to write the great histories and 
the grand tragedies, or realize any of the golden dreams, of his im- 
agination. There appeared only in 1746 a thin volume of twelve 
Odes, which, though containing a reputation, failed to find any 
readers. Collins was so mortified at the failure that he recalled 
the edition and destroyed it. Happily about the same time he 
made the acquaintance of the amiable Thomson, to be near whom 
he went to live at Richmond. There is some reason to think that 
Collins is the pensive man " of special grave remark," whose face 
" o'erspread with tender gloom " looks out upon us from the Cas- 
tle of Indolence. That the friendship of the two gentle poets was 
of the tenderest kind can be doubted by none who has read — and 
who has not read?— the elegiac Ode on the Death of Thomson. This, 
one of the finest of his poems, was written in 1748 ; next year fort- 
une came to him upon whom Fame had turned a deaf ear ; an 
uncle, a Colonel Martin, dying, left him an independence. He 
was then only twenty-eight ; but hope was dead within him. He 
sank gradually into melancholy, from which neither foreign travel 



OTHER POETS 197 

nor sisterly affection nor the consolations of religion could rescue 

^'collins left behind him considerably less than two thousand 
lines of verse altogether; yet much of this is pure ore. His long- 
est poems are an Ode to Liherty and another on the Popular Si^er. 
stmons of Scotland; they contain some able passages^ But h s 
fame securely rests ^n his wondrous unrhymed Ode to Evemng, his 
Ode on the Passions, and his Ode on the Death of Thomson. 

"Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore 

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest, 
And oft suspend the dashing oar 
To bid his gentle spirit rest. . . . 

''But thou who own'st that earthly bed— 
Ah ! what will every dirge avail ? 
Or tears which Love and Pity shed 
That mourn beneath the gliding sail ?" 

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774) was one of the most industrious and 
successful writers of his age, using his pen in almost every depart- 
Sof literature, and touching nothing without a^or^^^^^^^^^^ 
His most important work was done m prose, and for that reason 
f skSch of his life is deferred till we come to consider the essay- 
Ls But the singular grace and continued popularity of his 
poetry dland for'it some notice here. The first oi^^VO^^^ 
\he Traveller, begun at least during his wandering on ^he Conti- 
nent and suggested by that romantic episode m his earl lei life 
was finlhed in London, probably in 1757 ; but the publication of 
Twas delayed till 1765. "^ Five years later, in 1770, he published 
tZ Deserted Village, a poem in the same metre and manner as The 
Travller and of nearly the same length. It is further an expan- 
sion t a series of contrasted views designed to represent the evils 
of rural depopulation, of a couplet in The Traveller : 

- Have we not seen, at Pleasure's lordly call, 
The smiling, long-frequented village fall ? 

These two companion poems have for their obj^^ct to demonstmte 
thP f ntilitv of political government to remedy the ills of lite. 
Johnson form2^^^^ the ai-gument in a couplet which is more re- 
markable for its pith than its poetry : 

-How small, of all that human hearts endure, _ 

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure ! 



198 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

But the charm of the poems lies in the picturesque views of na- 
tional and of village life, and the simplicity and sweetness of the 
diction. For truthfulness of observation and harmony of lan- 
guage the description of summer evening in Auburn remains un- 
matched in English poetry : 

"Sweet was the sound when oft at evening's close 
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose. 
There, as I passed with careless steps and slow, 
The mingling notes came softened from below ; 
The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 
The sober herd that lowed to meet their young. 
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 
The playful children just let loose from school. 
The watch-dog's voice that bayed the whispering wind. 
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind — 
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade, 
And filled each pause the nightingale had made." 

A heaven of repose hangs over the whole charming scene. In these 
exquisite poems Goldsmith's return to the couplet of Pope served 
to exhaust its capabilities as an instrument of verbal music. The 
ballad of Edwin and Angelina, and the two comic elegies, On the 
Death of a Mad Dog, and On Mrs. Mary Blaize, make up, with the 
pleasant anapsestic satires, Retaliation and The Haunch of Venison, 
the rest of Goldsmith's poetry that is worthy of note. 

George Crabbe (1754-1832) was born at Aldborough, on the Suf- 
folk coast, in the house of his father, the saltmaster, or collector of 
the salt duties there, His father, having nothing else to give him, 
provided him witli a good education, and apprenticed him to a sur- 
geon ; but after a dreary attempt to gather a practice in his native 
town, young Crabbe laid aside the scalpel for the pen, and went 
off to London to try his fortune in literature with three pounds in 
his purse. He shortly found himself destitute, and threw himself 
on the generosity of Edmund Burke, who at once befriended him 
with his hospitality, his advice, and his influence. This was in 
1781. In the same year he published Tlie Library, which brought 
him into notice. He was now persuaded to enter tlie Church, and 
having qualified himself for the office, was by-and-by, through 
Burke's influence, appointed chaplain to the Duke of Rutland, 
After various experiences as a clergyman in Dorsetshire and else- 
where, he was presented by the duke, in 1814, to the living of 
Trowbridge, in Wiltshire, worth about £800 a year, and there he 
remained for the rest of his life. He was a quiet, simple-minded, 



OTHER POETS 



199 



conscientious parson— as like Parson Adams as twelve to a dozen 
(so Lord Thurlow told him) — spending a large proportion of his 
income, when by his stipend and the sale of his books he found 
himself a rich man, in unobtrusive acts of charity. A pleasant 
episode in his later life was his visit, in 1822, to Sir Walter Scott, 
in Edinburgh. 

Crabbe wrote a great deal, and mostly on the same kind of sub- 
ject — the annals of the poor. At intervals of two years, after The 
Library, appeared in succession The Village and The Neicspaper. 
A silent interval of fully twenty-two years passed, and then began 
the gloomy series of his later poems— TAe Parish Register in 1807, 
The Borough in 1810, Tales in Verse, 1812, and Tales of the Hall, 
1819. Crabbe has received his highest praise from Byron, who 
described him as "Nature's sternest painter, and her best." If 
by "Nature" Byron meant "poor human nature," it may be al- 
lowed that Crabbe was sufficiently stern ; but if he is also her 
" best " painter, meaning perfectly true and faithful in his photo- 
graphs of low life, " surely poor folk maun be wretches." There 
is no humor in Crabbe ; no jollity among his beggars. Burns's 
estimate — and he had ample means of judging — is better than 
Crabbe's best ; discussing the subject in his Twa Dogs, he gives it 
—"They're nae sae wretched's ane wad think ;" and the whole 
poem contains the proof. Crabbe may have widened our sympa- 
thies for the poor, as he certainly widened in his own way our 
knowledge of their miseries ; but his verse leaves a depressing 
effect on the mind, like a visit to the jail or the workhouse. He 
is more tolerable as a stern painter of external nature, as the fol- 
lowing description of the open commons and sterile farms near 
Aldborough will serve to show ; 

"Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o'er, 
Lends the light turf that warms the neighbouring poor ; 
From thence a length of burning sands appears 
Where the thin harvest waves its withered ears ; 
Rank weeds, that every art and care defy. 
Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted rye ; 
There thistles spread their thorny arms afar, 
And to the ragged infant threaten war." 

—The 



The mingled simplicity and fierceness, and the strange lyrical 
melody and mysticism, of the poet -artist William Blake (1757- 
1827) give him a unique i^lace among the poets of the eighteenth 
century. He was born, the son of a poor hosier, in London ; was 
slightly and irregularly educated, and put apprentice to an en- 



200 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

graver at an early age. He was already writing poetry. As a 
student at the Royal Academy he made the acquaintance of Flax- 
man and Fuseli, both of whom were impressed with the originality 
of his genius. At the age of twenty-five he married an illiterate 
but affectionate and loyal woman of his own rank, and opened a 
shop as an engraver and designer. Next year he published his 
Poetical Sketches, but the small book failed to attract any notice. 
His circumstances at this time were humble in the extreme ; but 
he found consolation in hope and faith, which never failed him, 
and in mysterious communion with an invisible world. The death 
of a favorite brother increased his habit of withdrawing from 
practical life and living in a state of imaginative seclusion. Here 
he found the strange inspirations which guided both his pen and 
his pencil. It was in obedience to the fancied advice of his broth- 
er's spirit that he brought out, in 1789, his Songs of Innocence — not 
only writing and illustrating, but, with his own hands, printing 
and engraving the entire edition. These Songs are like the joyful 
utterance of free and fearless childhood. The Songs of Experience, 
published in 1794, are the contrast ; they treat with the same 
strange lyrical power of the anomalies and dreadful mysteries of 
life. The Lamb is the typical poem in the former. The Tiger in 
the latter, collection. The enigmatical, if not unintelligible, Book 
of Thel, and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, came between. 
Like these, Urizen, published in 1800, is only a name. The great 
feature of Blake's poetry is his infinitely tender love for children 
and animals, and his hatred of cruelty ; his expression recalls the 
style of Herrick and the lyrical utterance of Shakespeare. Prob- 
ably the most regular and coherent of his poems, certainly not the 
least melodious, is his lament To the Muses : 



'Whether on Ida's shady brow. 
Or in the chambers of the East, 

The chambers of the sun, that now 
From ancient melody have ceased ; 

Whether in heaven ye wander fair, 
Or the green corners of the earth. 

Or the blue regions of the air 
Where the melodious winds have birth; 

Whether on crystal rocks ye rove 
Beneath the bosom of the sea, 

Wandering in many a coral grove, 
Fair Nine ! forsaking Poesy ; 



OTHER POETS 201 

" How have you left the ancient love 
That bards of old enjoyed in you ! 
The languid strings do scarcely move, 
The sound is forced, the notes are few !" 

— To the Muses. 

Of small poets belonging to the period the following may be 
named : 

Sir William Davenant, Shakespeare's godson, an unwearied writer 
of poor dramas, and author of a collection of verses entitled Mad- 
agascar, and an epic fragment in rhyme called Gondihert. 

Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, author of a short didactic 
Essay on Translated Verse, in heroic couplets. 

Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the patron and friend of Dryden 
and Prior, and author of some graceful enough lyrics. 

Thomas Shadwell, satirized as Macflecknoe by Dryden, who de- 
scribes him as "never deviating into sense"; he wrote "inoffen- 
sive " satires, and nearly a score of rather dull plays, of which 
Dryden characterized the tragedies as "giving smiles" and the 
comedies " sleep." 

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, a vicious man and a malignant 
enemy— witness his brutal treatment of Dryden— but as witty as 
he was wicked, and the author of perhaps the finest lyrics of the 
time of Charles II. 

Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, who wrote in conjunction with 
Prior The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse in ridicule of Dry- 
den's Hind and Panther, but better known as a patron of letters 
and the friend of Addison ; it was to him that Addison sent the 
Letter from Italy. 

Sir Samuel Garth, a London physician, author of a clever mock- 
heroic poem, The Dispensary ; and Claremont, a descriptive piece 
on the model of Cooper's Hill. 

Ambrose Philips, the framer of certain " namby-pamby " odes in 
what Pope contemptuously called "the infantile style"; author 
also of the tragedy The Distressed Mother. 

John Philips, the daring and successful parodist of the style of 
Paradise Lost, in a humorous mock-heroic, The Splendid Shilling; 
author also of a long poem on Cider, a kind of Georgic of apple- 
orchards. . . 
Thomas Tickell, a scholar, essayist of some repute, and the mti- 
mate friend of Addison, whose death he lamented in an Elegy of 
sincere pathos. . . 

William Somerville, an admirer of Addison and an imitator of 
Thomson, known for his descriptive poem of The Ghace. 
Matthew Green, author of The Spleen, a poem in octosyllabics, 



202 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

praised by Gray, and recommending a quiet country life as a cure 
for low spirits. 

Richard Savage, author of The Wanderer, in heroics, but better 
known by Johnson's biography of him. 

David Malloch, or Mallet as he called himself to suit the South- 
ron tongue, now remembered for his ballad of William and Mar- 
garet, and a lyric. The Birks of Invermay. 

Robert Blair, a Scottish minister, author of a gloomy but original 
poem entitled The Grave. 

John Dyer, a native of Wales, whose rhyming poem, Orongar 
Hill, was published in the same year as Thomson's Winter; he is 
also known for a didactic poem in blank-verse called The Fleece, 
which treats of 

" The care of sheep, the labours of the loom." 

John Armstrong, a London physician, the friend and fellow-coun- 
tryman of Thomson, author of The Art of Preserving Health. 

Richard Glover, author of an epic of Leonidas and the ballad of 
Admiral Hosier's Ghost. 

William Shenstone, of the Leasowes, author of Elegies and The 
Schoolmistress — the latter a short but pretty successful effort in the 
Spenserian measure, written about the same time as The Castle of 
Indolence. 

Mark Akenside, a learned physician, and fellow of the Royal So- 
ciety, author of The Pleasures of Imagination. 

William Falconer, a Scottish sailor, belonging to Edinburgh, au- 
thor of The ShipiDveck, a realistic poem of the sea, in which nauti- 
cal phrases are freely used, 

Charles Churchill, a coarse, violent, and virulent satirist, author 
of Gotham. 

Dr. Erasmus Darwin, author of The Loves of the Plants (published 
iu 1789), afterwards expanded into a scientific treatise in very cor- 
rect verse of the merely artificial kind, and entitled The Botanic 
Garden. 

James Seattle, author of The Minstrel, written in the Spenserian 
measure. 

James Macpherson, the translator, if not the inventor, of Ossian. 

Michael Bruce, a young Scottish poet, author of Paraphrases, and 
perhaps (for it is disputed) the well-known Ode to the Cuckoo. 

Robert Fergusson, who wrote in the Scottish dialect, and had 
great influence on Burns. 

Thomas Chatterton, "the marvellous boy, the sleepless soul that 
perished in his pride," the inventor of the Rowley Poems, JElla, 
The Bristowe Tragedie, etc. 



THOMAS OTWAY 203 



DRAMATISTS 

Two centuries lie between Massinger, the last of the Eliz- 
abethan writers of tragedy, and Shelley, the author of The 
Cenci, yet in the interval there is only one great tragic dram- 
atist, Thomas Otway (1651-1685). He succeeded where 
even Dryden failed. Otway was the son of a Sussex cler- 
gyman, and was educated first at Winchester, and finally 
at Oxford, but, becoming impatient of study, left Christ 
Church without finishing his course. Like Shakespeare and 
Ben Jonson before him, his first ambition was to be an 
actor ; but breaking down on his first appearance, he went 
back to Oxford, and, as his thoughts were still on the thea- 
tre, began presently to turn his attention to dramatic com- 
position. In his twenty-fifth year he produced Alcibiades, a 
tragedy which, though a poor play, gained some notice from 
the clever acting of Betterton and Mrs. Barry, who took the 
principal parts. Otway 's next tragedy, Bon Carlos, was in 
heroics, and seems to have been immensely popular beyond 
its deserts. Meanwhile he had fallen desperately in love 
Avith Mrs. Barry, and had incurred the rivalry of the Earl of 
Rochester. To break off the attachment he fled from Lon- 
don, and now he appears in the character of a soldier with 
a cornet's commission in a Flanders regiment. A single 
campaign satisfied his military ardor, and he returned — in 
some disgrace it is said — to London and the theatre. In 
1680 he produced The Orphan, which, with the more famous 
Venice Preserved in 1682, now constitutes his claim to our 
regard. His fame rests upon them. In both he returned 
to blank-verse. These powerful domestic tragedies, dealing 
mainly with middle - class life, kept the stage for nearly a 
century ; they were London favorites equally with Shake- 
speare's Hamlet and Othello when Thomson was WTiting The 
Seasons, and were still acted in the last years of Johnson. 
Indelicacy of plot has now banished The Orphan from the 
stage, but Venice Preserved is still occasionally acted. It is 
the emotion of pity to which Otway appeals in both, and 



204 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

few scenes out of Shakespeare are more tenderly drawn than 
those which present the sorrows of Monimia in the one 
tragedy and Belvidera in the other. Venice Preserved is 
the story of Belvidera, a Venetian senator's daughter, who 
marries Jaffier, a weak but affectionate adventurer, and is 
disowned by her father. Jaffier, reduced to desperation by 
poverty, is drawn by his friend Pierre into a plot to kill 
the senators of Venice and bring about a revolution in the 
State. In a moment of weakness Jaffier reveals the con- 
spiracy to his wife, who, horrified at the plot, warns her 
father, and is promised the safety of her husband. The 
conspirators are apprehended, and on the scaffold Jaffier 
first stabs Pierre to save him from the torture of the wheel, 
and immediately afterwards stabs himself. Belvidera's mis- 
eries drive her mad. A feature of the art of Otway is the 
absence of rant ; the language is clear and forcible, and the 
lines vibrate with genuine human passion. 

Otway's life was dissipated, and shortened by excess and 
privation. At last he fell into a condition of utter destitu- 
tion and hopelessness. Different accounts are given of the 
immediate cause of his death ; the one that has most taken 
the popular imagination is to the effect that when starving 
he ate so ravenously a piece of bread given him in the street 
by the hand of charity that he choked on the first mouth- 
ful. He was only thirty-four. 

If tragedy languished after the Elizabethan age, comedy 
flourished in a new development, and its wittiest exponent 
was William Congreve (1670-1729). He belongs to the 
school of Etheredge, who, inspired by Moliere, founded our 
modern comedy at the time of the Restoration ; and among 
his later followers in the comedy of contemporary manners 
are Goldsmith and Sheridan. The son of a wandering Cava- 
lier of good family, Congreve was born in Yorkshire not far 
from the town of Leeds, but his cbildhood and youth were 
passed in Ireland. He was educated at Kilkenny School 
and Dublin University, where he made scholarly acquaint- 
ance with the Latin and Greek classics. At twenty he was 



WILUAM CONGREVE 205 

in London, a student of the Middle Temple, but not greatly- 
caring for the profession of law. He had been secretly 
smitten with the charms of the theatre, and early began to 
write for the stage. He had just attained his majority when 
The Old Bachelor was ready, though not acted till two years 
later. He followed it up immediately with The Double 
Dealer, which, though at first less popular, caught the ear of 
the public at last on the unusual warmth of Dryden's appro- 
bation. Dryden declared that a new and better Shakespeare 
had appeared, and in his verdict the poets and critics of the 
day seem to have joined. Congreve had now every induce- 
ment to write, and in 1695 he was ready with a masterpiece, 
Love for Love, which established his fame. In this play the 
British sailor, in the character of Ben Legend, makes his 
appearance on the modern stage for the first time. Con- 
greve now tried his hand at tragedy, and brought out The 
Mourning Bride in 1697. Its success was beyond precedent. 
It was even more successful than Love for Love. Yet it is a 
very poor affair, written in stilted blank-verse, and has long 
lain unacted and unread. It opens, however, with a line 
which is still quoted, " Music hath charms to soothe the sav- 
age breast." All Congreve's four comedies are objectiona- 
ble for their immorality ; his one tragedy, which escapes 
the charge, is objectionable for its dulness. Its lines want 
variety, and its sentiment passion. A feature of the trage- 
dy is the consolation of Almeria after all her woes. It was 
while Congreve was at the height of his fame that the Rev. 
Jeremy Collier published (1693) his Short View of the Im- 
morality and Profaneness of the English Stage. The book 
was a heroic and successful attack, before which Dryden 
fled discomfited, and to which Congreve opposed an angry 
and futile resistance. Congreve returned to comedy in his 
next play. The Way of the World, produced in 1700. Little 
inferior to Love for Love, it was rather a failure ; and, 
chilled by the coldness of its reception, smarting also from 
the castigation of Collier, Congreve vowed at the age of 
thirty to write no more for the stage, and he kept his vow. 
But the fame he had acquired was sufficient to secure for 



206 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

him for the remaining twenty-eight years of his life a high 
and respected place in the world of letters. Pope paid him 
a great compliment by dedicating the Iliad to him. 

At this time he was the darling of society. Voltaire 
paid him the honor of a visit, and administered at the same 
time a smart rebuhe to his vanity for posing as a man of 
fashion and affecting to despise literary fame. " It was 
only for your literary fame," said Voltaire, " that I had the 
curiosity to see you, and the wish to know you." He was 
a favorite with ministers on both sides of politics. His first 
place, given him on the production of his first play, was a 
commissionership for the licensing of hackney-coaches ; and 
his last, and most lucrative, worth £1200 a year, was the 
secretaryship of the Island of Jamaica, a post to which he 
was appointed on the accession of George I. Gout and 
blindness, brought on by intemperate habits, were the afflic- 
tions of his middle age and later life ; and he became a per- 
manent guest in the household of the eccentric Henrietta, 
Duchess of Marlborough. To her, who had already vast 
wealth, he left the bulk of his fortune, with only a trifling 
legacy to Mrs. Bracegirdle, the famous actress, to whom he 
should have left all. Her grace bought a superb diamond 
necklace with Congreve's thousands, and wore it for his 
sake. She showed her regard in other ways : " It is said 
that she had a statue of him in ivory, which moved by 
clockwork, and was placed daily at her table ; that she had 
a wax doll made in imitation of him, and that the feet of the 
doll were regularly blistered and anointed by the doctors, 
as poor Congreve's feet had been when he suffered from 
the gout." 

The art of Congreve shows to brilliant advantage in dia- 
logue. Here he is easy, bright, and well - bred to the last 
degree. So superabundant is his wit that it enters the con- 
versation of all his characters ; his footmen and maids talk 
with as much point and polish as their masters and mis- 
tresses. His plots are intricate and sometimes confusing, 
and the action lingers and lags in deference to the dialogue. 
It is vain to accuse his lovers of insincerity ; they are as he 



GEORGE FARQUHAR 207 

found them in tlie fashionable world of his day. His char- 
acters are generally clear-drawn and lifelike; but, " judged 
morally," every one of them is, in the language of Charles 
Lamb, " alike essentially vain and worthless." 

Less witty, but scarcely less popular, and with more heart 
than Congreve, was George Farquhar (1678-1707), the last 
of the brilliant band sometimes known as the Orange dram- 
atists. The son of a clergyman, and born at Londonderry, 
Farquhar was a student at Trinity College when an early 
ambition to shine as an actor drove him on the Dublin 
stage. Here he had the misfortune to wound a fellow- 
actor by using a sword for a foil in a fencing scene in one 
of Dryden's heroic plays. The accident seems to have 
made him renounce a player's life, and we next hear of 
him as an officer in the army who by-and-by attains the 
rank of captain. He had not, however, broken with the 
theatre. In his twentieth year we find him in London writ- 
ing comedies, and drawing upon his experience of military 
life from the first. Love and a Bottle was followed in 1700 
by The Constant Couple, and its sequel Sir Harry Wild- 
air; after these came The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux' 
Stratagem, rattling comedies all astir with bustle, advent- 
ure, and exuberant animal spirits ; and yet the last was 
composed in six weeks' time, it is said, while he lay on his 
death-bed, oppressed with personal disappointment and do- 
mestic cares. He had sold his commission in order to 
marry a young lady who, to secure his affections, pretended 
she was an heiress. On discovering, when his own means 
were almost exhausted, that she was even poorer than him- 
self, he had the gallantry to conceal his annoyance. He left 
" two helpless girls " to the care of his friend Wilks, an 
actor ; " look upon them sometimes," he wrote, '' and think 
of their father, who was to the last moment of his life thy 
friend." He died in his thirtieth year. Captain Plume in 
The Recruiting Officer is believed to be a portrait of himself. 

Scarcely less offensive to morality than Congreve, Far- 
quhar has more natural gayety ; while his sympathetic 



208 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

touches and the absence of cynicism give a healthier air 
to his scenes and characters. His plots are interesting, 
and his characters drawn with a broad and free hand. 
Boniface is still the type of a provincial innkeeper, and the 
humors of recruiting in the bustle of an English market- 
town on market-day rise at once to the imagination at men- 
tion of Sergeant Kite, with his drum and his swagger and 
his song of Over the hills and far away. 

OTHER DRAMATISTS 

Dryden's work as a dramatist has been already considered (p. 
152). It is only necessary here to give a connected view of his 
dramatic industry. He began with an indifferent comedy, The 
Wild Gallant, in 1663; passed on to the heroic drama, in rhyme, 
which for fourteen years he labored to establish in England, pro- 
ducing, as the most notable examples of their class. The Indian 
Queen (in 1664), The Indian Emperor, Tyrannic Love, The Con- 
quest of Oranada (in 1672), and Aiireng-Zebej returned to blank- 
verse by the production of All for Love, or The World Well Lost, 
in 1678, a tragedy which contains his best dramatic work; wrote 
an amusing comedy, The Spanish Friar, in 1681, with which he 
took temporary farewell of the theatre to turn his attention to 
satire ; and resumed his connection with the stage in the last dec- 
ade of his life, bringing out Bon Sebastian and Amphitryon, the 
best of his later plays, in 1690, and Love Triumphant, his last and 
perhaps the weakest of all, in 1694. Altogether Dryden wrote in 
whole or in part about thirty dramatic pieces. He had no natural 
instinct for play-writing, and wrote simply because it was fash- 
ionable and paid. There is little or no genuine passion in his se- 
rious dramas, and he seeks to conceal the want by declamatoi'y 
rant. It was the labored rhymes and bombastic sentiment of The 
Conquest of Qranada which provoked the Duke of Buckingham's 
clever satirical burlesque of The Rehearsal. Dryden's plays, and 
especially his comedies, lie open to the charge of indecency. 
When Collier arraigned him in the Short View, he owned the jus- 
tice of the rebuke with frankness and dignity. "If Mr. Collier 
be my enemy," he wrote, " let him triumph ; if he be my friend, 
he will be glad of my repentance." 

William Wycherley (1640-1715), one of the handsomest and most 
profligate men of his time, was educated in France and at Ox- 
ford, studied law at the Temple, and became a distinguis^ied 
courtier and guardsman of Charles II. He wrote, in the Comedy 



OTHER DRAMATISTS 209 

of Manners, four pieces in all, which were produced in the in- 
terval between 1672 and 1675. They are grossly indelicate, but 
maintain their place in the history of modern comedy for wit and 
vivacity of dialogue, and for pungency and satirical remark. The 
Country Wife and The Plain Dealer are the last and most famous 
of the four, A Roman Catholic in his youth, he reverted to the 
Romish faith after a slight acquaintance with Protestantism, and 
was pensioned by James II. His old age was marked by a short- 
lived friendship for young Pope, and disgraced by the publica- 
tion of an unpoetical and immoral miscellany of verse. 

Equally licentious as a writer, but with less cynicism and as much 
knowledge of the ways of the world, was John Vanbrugh (1672- 
1726). Some reports make the Bastille the place of his birth. It 
is at least certain that he lived in France in his youth. He wrote 
ten comedies, beginning in 1697 witli two. The Relapse and The 
Provoked Wife, which brought him both fame and fortune at 
once. The Confederacy, produced in 1705, is probably his best 
and most amusing play. Vanbrugh was an architect by profes- 
sion, and the designer of Blenheim House, the nation's gift to the 
Duke of Marlborough. He was a favorite of Queen Anne, and 
was knighted by George I,, who made him controller of the 
royal works. Vanbrugh wrote as solidly and carefully as he 
built; there is much variety in his scenes; and, though coarse, he 
is at least a faithful transcriber of those phases of life and char 
acter which he chose to represent. Like Congreve, he had the 
imprudence to reply to Jeremy Collier's famous attack, for it 
was impossible that he could refute the charge of the Short Vieio. 

To the list of the earlier and later Restoration dramatists belong 
also the following writers : 

Sir George Etheredge, who introduced the modern comedy into 
England by the production of The Comical Revenge in 1664; he 
was author also of The Man of Mode (1676). 

Mrs. Ayfara, or Aphra Behn, the Astraea of Pope's satire, who 
wrote nearly a score of plays, all coarse, the most popular (and 
not the least vicious) of which was The Forced Marriage; she was 
the first Englishwoman to live by her writings. 

Nat Lee, a writer of wild tragedy " in Ercles' vein," the best of 
which, Lucius Junius Brutus, appeared in 1681 ; Lee became in- 
sane. 

Thomas Southerne, a writer of sentimental tragedy of the school 
of Otway, and like him singularly free from rant; his best plays 
are The Fatal Marriage and Oroonoko — the latter a dramatic denun- 
ciation of the slave-trade ; he lived to an advanced age— from 1659 
to 1746. 

14 



210 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Colley Gibber, the author of many light plays, comparatively 
pure, of which The Careless Husband, produced in 1704, and The 
Non-Juro)\ in 1717, are the best. 

Nicholas Rowe, a writer of pathetic tragedy, of which The Fair 
Penitent, produced in 1703, and Jane Shore, in 1713, are his best 
specimens. 

Of the eighteenth-century dramatists none attained to real ex - 
cellence in tragedy. They were at best rhetorical rather than im- 
passioned. Among them are Addison, whose Cato was acted in 
1713 ; Young, whose Busiris and The Revenge appeared in 1719 ; 
Thomson, who, beginning with Soj^honisba in 1729, wrote also Aga- 
memnon, Tancred and Sigismunda, a heavy play but his best, 
and Coriolanus, acted the year after his death ; Johnson, whose 
Irene appeared also in 1749 ; and John Home, whose Douglas, in 
1756, was for a time exceedingly popular. 

Steele, author of The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode (acted in 
1702), and TJie Conscious Lovers (acted in 1722); and George Col- 
man, who in conjunction with Garrick brought out The Clandestine 
Marriage in 1766— are, with Goldsmith and Sheridan, the best- 
known writers of comedy. 

Goldsmith was forty when his first comedy, The Good-Natured 
Man, appeared in 1768. Much more successful, and still very pop- 
ular, was She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Night, first 
performed in 1773. The plot was suggested by a ludicrous inci- 
dent of the author's own early life — the blunder, namely, of taking 
a private mansion for an inn. With variety of scene, character, 
and situation ; sprightly and humorous dialogue ; an easy, grace- 
ful style ; and an amusing plot — She Stoops to Conquer h^iS all the 
requisites, as Johnson said, of attaining the great end of comedy 
— making an audience merry. In its moral purity the comedy of 
Goldsmith presents a great contrast to that of Congreve; if it has 
less wit it has more humor, and the humor is wholesome and 
kindly 

Less easy and graceful than Goldsmith's, but with wit that 
sparkled more brightly and more continuously, was the comic 
genius of his countryman, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816). 
He was born in Dublin, and educated at Harrow, where he gave 
no promise of future distinction. Bred to no profession, he 
turned to literature, and began an unexpectedly brilliant career 
with The Rivals in 1775. Two years later he brought out at Drury 
Lane his great comedy, The School for Scandal, which took at 
first, and has never ceased to be effective. It is the wittiest and 
cleverest play of recent times. The Critic, a clever farcical piece 
in the style of The Rehearsal, came later. He was as entertain- 
ing with his tongue as with his pen, and became a prime favorite 



RICHARD STEELE 211 

with Fox and the Prince Regent. In 1780 he began his political 
career as M.P. for Stafford, attached himself to the Whig partj'-, 
and distinguished himself by an eloquent speech against War- 
ren Hastings. Always improvident, he fell latterly into debt and 
destitution. His last contributions to the stage were adaptations 
from the German. 



ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS 

The merit of founding the English literary magazine, 
which is such a pronounced feature of our current literature, 
is usually given to Richard Steele (1672-1729); but it is 
only fair to Defoe to notice that his Review had the start of 
The Taller by five years, and held its place for ten. The 
Review^ however, which was essentially, though not exclu- 
sively, a political journal, had nothing like the popularity or 
the influence of the periodical essays of Steele. To him, 
fairly enough, is due the credit of establishing the literary 
periodical. Steele was born, partly of English, partly of 
Irish parentage, in Dublin, and was educated at the Charter- 
house and Oxford. At both these places he shared the inti- 
mate friendship of Addison, though the companions were 
of different colleges, Steele being first of Christ Church, and 
afterwards of Merton. Impatient of the quiet monotony of 
study, Steele broke away from Oxford in 1695 to become a 
trooper in the Life Guards. In a few years he had raised 
himself to the rank of captain, and acquired a name for 
dashing and dissolute gayety. In a fit of pious reflection he 
produced The Christian Hero, and being in danger of losing 
his character for good-fellowship with his brother officers by 
the publication of so serious a book, hastened to recover 
their good graces by writing the same year (1701) his com- 
edy of The Funeral, or Grief a la Mode. It was successful 
on the stage, and he wrote other two. The Lying Lover and 
The Tender Husband — both of which were too moral for the 
age, and failed. 

In 1707 he received the appointment of gazetteer for the 
Whig government ; and the post giving him early access to 
foreign intelligence, he conceived the idea of utilizing his 



212 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

position by supplying the town with news. Accordingly 
the first number of The Taller appeared in April, 1709. It 
was not intended, however, to be a mere newspaper ; its 
scope, as originally planned, may be gathered from Steele's 
prospectus: "All accounts of gallantry, pleasure, and enter- 
tainment shall be under the article of White's Chocolate 
House ; poetry under that of Wills' Coffee House ; learning 
under the title of Grecian ; foreign and domestic news you 
will have from St. James's Coffee House ; and what else I 
shall on any other subject offer shall be dated from my own 
apartment." Politics were soon gradually dropped, and it 
ran successfully for nearly two years as the vehicle of town 
gossip or tattle. Steele himself was the chief writer; but 
Addison also contributed in the proportion of one article to 
about four of Steele's. But the idea had so captivated the 
heart of Addison that when, on the 1st of March, 1711, the 
more famous Spectator was begun, he became the chief con- 
tributor, and actually wrote the half of its five hundred and 
fifty odd numbers. Steele's contributions comprised almost 
the other half. The Spectator, while having almost the same 
object as The Tatler, the entertainment of the town by means 
of short essays on life and manners, took a higher tone, 
and was conducted on a more definite plan. It professed 
to contain the adventures and reflections of an imaginary 
club, of which Mr. Spectator is the central figure, and Sir 
Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport, Captain Sentry, 
Will Honeycomb, and Will Wimble more or less companion 
members, each representing a different interest. The Tatler 
had been published thrice a week ; The Spectator was a 
daily issue. Its effect in purifying the character and im- 
proving the manners of the age can hardly be overesti- 
mated. While these periodicals show Steele's interest in 
the cause of public morality, his Letters reveal his own pri- 
vate life. They are about 400 in number, and were written 
to his wife, Mary Scurlock, a Welsh heiress whom he mar- 
ried in l707, and who is variously addressed as "Adorable 
Molly," " Dearest Prue,'- and " Dearest Being on Earth." 
They were private letters which found their way to the pub- 



RICHARD STEELE 213 



lie some sixty years after Steele's death ; and they afiord 
us the most trustworthy evidence of his character. They 
show him to be honest, warm-hearted, and impulsive, con- 
tinually slipping into acts of imprudence and folly, and con- 
tinually vowing amendment. 

After the stoppage of The Spectator in December, 1712, 
a succession of short-lived periodicals was from time to time 
projected by Steele, comprising The Guardian, started in 
March, 1713 ; The Englishman, almost wholly political; The 
Lover, The Reader, The Theatre, and The Spinster. While 
The Guardian was running its course Steele got caught in 
the meshes of politics, and, leaving the journal to the con- 
duct of Addison and Berkeley, entered Parliament, became 
polemical, earned the enmity of Swift, and was ejected from 
the House of Commons in 1714 for his pamphlet of The 
Crisis. In 1715, on the accession of George L, the Whigs 
got into power, and Steele's day of political reward arrived. 
He was knighted, re-entered Parliament, and received the 
appointment of supervisor of Drury Lane. Greater honors 
came to Addison ; and the friends, whom literature had 
united in closer bonds, were now to be separated by politi- 
cal jealousies. On the death of Addison in 1719 Steele's 
generous heart smote him for his part in the estrangement, 
and he bitterly expressed regret for the cause of it. He did 
nothing of literary note after Addison's death, except to 
produc'e, in 1722, after an absence from the stage of seven- 
teen years, his fourth and best comedy, The Conscious Lov- 
ers. His health had been giving way ; his wife was dead ; 
his affairs were in confusion. In 1723 he retired from Lon- 
don to Wales, where he spent in obscurity the last six years 
of his life. 

The best work of Steele is in his Essays, and his chief 
praise is in the elevating tone of his teaching. He brought 
back decency to the comic drama, and in his periodicals he 
set himself the task of improving the morals and manners 
of society. His style is natural and lively, less graceful than 
Addison's, and his taste is less refined ; but he is his equal in 
inventiveness and in knowledge of the world. The concep- 



214 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

tion of the character of Sir Roger de Coverley was Steele's ; 
but the creation of it is the work of Addison. Steele's es- 
teem for women, and his sympathy with children are beau- 
tiful traits in his character ; it was he who said of Lady 
Elizabeth Hastings that "to love her was a liberal educa- 
tion." 

The finest prose writer of the eighteenth century was 
Joseph Addison (1672-1719). His style was beheved to 
have reached perfection ; and Johnson declared that if any 
one was ambitious of writing well, he could not do better 
than give his days and nights to the study of Addison. 
He was the junior by some six weeks of his school friend 
and lifelong associate, Richard Steele. Born in the rectory 
at Milston, near Araesbury in Wiltshire, he was educated at 
Lichfield Grammar School, the Charterhouse, and Oxford. 
He was a student of Magdalen College, where he distin- 
guished himself for classical scholarship, and became a fel- 
low of his college at the age of twenty-six. He had already 
made some name in academical circles for English verse, in 
the form of translations and addresses. Through Dryden, 
of whom he was a professed admirer, he made acquaintance 
with influential politicians, and was pensioned by Lord Som- 
ers and Charles Montague (afterwards Lord Halifax), and 
sent to the Continent to gain such familiarity with foreign 
languages and manners as would qualify him for public ser- 
vice in the Whig interest. He was abroad nearly four years 
in all, and visited France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Ger- 
many, and Holland. In the interval of his absence he wrote 
the Letter from Italy ^ and the greater part of a tragedy on 
Cato. The death of King William recalled him to England 
in 1703, to find his father dead, his friends out of oflBce, and 
his pension stopped. He had now only his fellowship and 
his abilities to trust to. 

In 1704 he was surprised in his obscure lodging, "up 
three shabby pair of stairs in the Hay market," by a visit 
from a government emissary to ask him for a poem on the 
victory of Blenheim. Addison caught the golden opportu- 



JOSEPH ADDISON 215 

nity, and The Campaign (1705) was the basis of his fortunes. 
He was appointed under -secretary of state, and entered 
Parliament as member for Mahiiesbury, a constituency he 
continued to represent till his death. In 1709, being then 
thirty-seven years of age, he went to Ireland as chief sec- 
retary to the lord lieutenant ; and in the same year be- 
gan his connection with the periodical press of Steele. He 
was Steele's chief support in The Tatler, and was the main- 
stay of The Spectator. Like Steele, he did his best work 
in literature for the periodical essay. Among his friends 
for a short time were Swift and Pope, and when Cato was 
acted in 1713 Pope contributed the prologue. This rather 
frigid tragedy was believed by his contemporaries to be his 
masterpiece, and it had a phenomenal success. 

Addison was now at the height of his fame. He was also 
wealthy and the possessor of the estate of Bilton, near Rug- 
by, which he had bought for £10,000, saved partly from his 
lucrative offices in the government service, but mainly from 
the earnings of his pen. 1716 found him editor of The Free- 
holder, a periodical of his own, dedicated to the cause of 
the Hanoverian succession ; and in the same year he married 
the Dowager Countess of Warwick. Next year he attained 
the high office of secretary of state in the ministry of the 
Earl of Sunderland. This appointment asthma and dropsy, 
brought on by over-indulgence in wine, forced him to resign 
within a few months. His estrangement from Swift dates 
from 1710, when Swift went over to the Tories ; from Pope, 
who libelled him as Atticus, from 1715, when he expressed 
a preference for Tickell's Homer to Pope's ; from Steele, 
who opposed the Peerage bill while his friend supported it, 
from a few months before his death in 1719. 

Addison's charm is in his style, and his merit in his mo- 
rality. He was the first to enliven morality with wit, and 
temper wit with morality. He is, however, less remarkable 
for what he says than how he says it ; his manner is of a 
superior quality to his matter. The most conspicuous qual- 
ities of his manner are its lightness, brightness, and air of 
good - breeding. This is not a natural result, but the at- 



216 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

tainment of an elaborate art whicli tries all things, rejecting 
and selecting till a definite end is gained. It is the triumph 
of art to conceal itself, and hence arises the peculiarity of 
the style of Addison, that while it seems to be the most nat- 
ural style in the world, it is the most difficult to imitate per- 
fectly. Pope spent no more care in choosing his words and 
balancing his numbers than Addison in the construction of 
his clear, unencumbered, and harmonious prose sentences. A 
good short specimen of the classical style and philosophical 
tendency of Addison will be found in his Vision of Mirza. 
But the series of essays in which he describes Sir Roger de 
Coverley and his friends must always remain his master- 
piece. 

The greatest force in letters of last century was Samuel 
Johnson (1709-1784), critic and moralist. He is little if 
at all read now, but the influence of his character lives- im- 
mortal in his friend Boswell's Biography. He was born at 
Lichfield, where his father was a bookseller. At eighteen 
he was sent to Pembroke College, Oxford, but was obliged 
through poverty to leave before taking a degree. On the 
death of his father he was thrown for a livelihood on his 
own resources. He tried tutoring, literary hackwork at Bir- 
mingham, and school-keeping near Lichfield, and then, in 
company with Garrick, who had been one of his three pu- 
pils, he came up to London in 1737 to seek his fortune. 
The capital of the adventurers amounted in money to only 
fourpence, and Johnson was already married. Johnson found 
employment on Edward Cave's periodical The Gentleman's 
Magazine, but both he and his companion (whose talents 
were for the stage) had a sore struggle to win their way. 
Fortune came first to Garrick ; she came late but at last to 
Johnson also. His triumph was the well-earned result of 
about twenty-five years' hard and incessant toil, dating from 
his arrival in London. His work included two rhymed sat- 
ires in imitation of Juvenal ; the earlier, London, published 
in 1738 — the later and best, The Vanity of Human Wishes, 
in 1749. In 1744 appeared his Life of Savage, an admi- 



SAMUEL JOHNSON 217 

rablc biography which brought his name as a writer of prose 
prominently before the public at a time when good biogra- 
phy was rare. It was in 1747 that he projected his famous 
Dictionary/ of the English Language, and, after eight years' 
laboriously silent work, it was published in 1755. It was 
in connection with its publication that he wrote the Letter 
to Lord Chesterfield, a singularly dignified piece of English 
prose, which lifted the literary life out of the degrading 
bondage of patronage. In 1749 his drama of Mahomet and 
Irene was put on the stage by Garrick, who was now mana- 
ger of Drury Lane. 

Johnson now sought to revive the periodical essay, and 
began The Rambler in 1750. He also wrote for The Ad- 
venturer, and between 1758 and 1760 contributed a series of 
essays known as Idlers to The Universal Chronicle. The 
Idlers are brighter and lighter than The Ramblers, but want 
the easy grace and sparkle of The Tatler and The Spectator. 
It was in the evenings of one week in the spring of 1759 
that he composed Rasselas, or The Prince of Abyssinia, the 
immediate object of its publication being to pay his moth- 
er's debts and defray the cost of her funeral. 

In 1762 he was rewarded with a pension of £300 a year, 
and being now independent, set himself to enjoy the sweets 
of social intercourse, for which he had a strong natural lik- 
ing, by his foundation of the Literary Club. The members 
included Reynolds, Garrick, Burke, Goldsmith, Boswell, Fox, 
and other notable men. Here Johnson was in his element. 
He was the best talker of his age, and shone to more advan- 
tage in conversation than in writing. In 1773, at the age of 
sixty-four, and enjoying better health than was usual to him, 
he made his memorable journey to the Scottish Highlands 
and Islands in the company of Boswell ; and in the autumn 
of the following year went on a tour in North Wales. In 
1775 Oxford gave him the degree of LL.D., an honor of 
which he was especially proud. He was seventy years of 
age when his Lives of the English Poets began to be pub- 
lished. He died in his house in Bolt Court in 1784. 

Johnson's weighty and impressive style suits well with a 



218 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

subject of moral grandeur such as not seldom employed his 
pen; but it grows monotonous, and becomes even ludi- 
crous, when applied on occasions of ordinary or trifling im- 
portance. It was to this uniform pomposity of style that 
Goldsmith alluded when he said that Dr. Johnson would 
make little fishes talk like whales. But while Johnson's 
style of writing is overloaded with long words from the 
Latin, and ponderous with rolling sentences, his speech 
presented a contrast in pithy and pointed idiomatic Saxon 
English. He was to his century what Dryden had been 
to the seventeenth — a literary dictator whose verdict was 
final. The moral integrity of Johnson gave weight to his 
decisions. 

Best known now for his poetry, Oliver Goldsmith (1728- 
1774) wrote so much and so well in prose of the essay form 
or style that he properly falls to be considered among the 
essayists. Even The Vicar of Wakefield^ usually spoken of 
as a novel, is as much entitled to be classed among essays 
as the Sir Roger de Coverley papers of Addison. Despite 
many faults and frailties of conduct, no author is dearer to 
the popular heart than Goldsmith. 

He was born at Pallas, in Longford, the fifth of a family 
of eight children, but passed his childhood at Lissoy (the 
reputed original of sweet Auburn), a village in West Meath. 
His life was one long series of school-boy escapades and 
blunders, through which his natural light-heartedness bore 
him buoyantly along. At school, like his countryman Sheri- 
dan, he was regarded by his teachers as little better than a 
fool. In 1744, being then in his sixteenth year, he was ad- 
mitted a sizar of Trinity College, Dublin, his father being 
too poor to afford him the status of a pensioner. He made 
a very indifferent student, was guilty of several college ir- 
regularities, and barely succeeded in taking his B.A. degree. 
Twice he was on the point of emigrating to America. It 
was a puzzle to his relatives what to make of him. They 
proposed the Church, but the bishop to whom he applied 
for orders rejected him ; they proposed law, and he set out 



OLIVER GOLDSMITH 219 

with the money necessary to make a start, but gambled it 
all away, and came back cheerful and penniless. He was 
again furnished by his uncle Contarine, and despatched to 
Edinburgh to try medicine; and now (1752) Ireland fairly 
got rid of him. 

He was hardly two years in Edinburgh — where he made, 
as before, a very sorry student — when the roving impulse 
again seized him, and he embarked for Bordeaux. Fortune 
drove the ship into Newcastle, where he was imprisoned for 
a Jacobite, and, on being released, he sailed to Holland, and 
came to Leyden. Here he had not been a year when the 
old restlessness returned, and he set out on foot to make 
the tour of Europe. With the Arcadian equipment of a 
flute, on which he played badly, he traversed Belgium, 
France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. The poetry of it 
all may be seen in The Traveller; but the prose of it, 
which he suppressed, must often have been a bitter experi- 
ence. Johnson said that he " disputed his passage through 
Europe" — meaning that he took advantage of the hospital- 
ity of those convents and universities which invited scholars 
to take part in their debates. 

He turned up at last in London in 1756, penniless, friend- 
less, without a profession, and with the disadvantages of an 
Irish accent, a hesitating manner of speech, an insignificant 
figure, and features rough and scarred with smallpox. His 
London life, till he became famous, was a struggle for bare 
liberty to live. He seems to have made many shifts, and 
to have been once at least on the verge of despair. He 
tried play-acting, school-teaching, shopkeeping for an apoth- 
ecary, proof-reading in the printing-office of Richardson the 
novelist, practising as a doctor on the strength of an apoc- 
ryphal foreign diploma ; and at last, after vainly attempting 
to pass as a hospital mate at Surgeons' Hall, settled down 
to the drudgery of doing hackwork for a succession of ras- 
cally booksellers. But even Goldsmith's hackwork has the 
merits of a light, graceful style and a genial humor. He 
wrote for numerous periodicals — among others for The 
Monthly Review, The Bee, The Critical RevieiVj The Public 



220 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

Ledger. To the last-named, beginning early in 1760, he 
contributed the famous Chinese Letters^ afterwards pub- 
lished in a book with the title Letters from a Citizen of the 
World. They number twenty -six, and were chiefly intend- 
ed to show how English manners and institutions strike 
a stranger. The travelling Chinese philosopher Lien Chi 
Altangi corresponds from England now with Fum Hoara, 
now with Hingpo, his countrymen in the East. The de- 
scription of Beau Tibbs is an excellent specimen of the 
light and graceful satire of this very diverting book. Its 
publication in 1762 marks Goldsmith's entrance into lit- 
erature. 

But it was in the year before tliis, and on the last day of 
May in that year, that Johnson came to sup with Goldsmith 
at his lodging in Wine Office Court, Fleet Street. It was a 
memorable event in the history of Goldsmith, for it brought 
him the solid friendship of one who, in his own gruff way, 
stood by ready to give Goldsmith counsel, encouragement, 
or protection, of one or other of which he was always in 
need. Another friend not less sincere, and more gentle, 
he found in Sir Joshua Reynolds. In 1765 Goldsmith, al- 
ready known as a poet, collected and published his Mis- 
cellaneous Essays. With each successive original work — 
The Vicar of Wakefield in l766, the comedy of The Good- 
natured Man in 1768, The Deserted Village in 1770, and 
She Stoops to Conquer in 1773 — Goldsmith rose more and 
more into fame. Fortune, too, visited him ; but he did 
not know how to utilize her visits. True, he treated him- 
self to gay clothes — plum-colored coats and breeches of 
purple satin, handsomer rooms, frequent holidays, with at 
least one trip to France in the company of the Hornecks 
and " The Jessamy Bride " ; but money could not stay in 
his pocket : he was the most generous and extravagant of 
mortals, and he died £2000 in debt. 

Goldsmith's original writings are only a fraction of his 
published work. He was an indefatigable compiler of Lives 
and Histories, of which his Roman History, his History of 
England, and A History of the Earth and Animated Nature 



EDMUND BURKE 221 

are the cliief. The wonder is that, with so much hackwork 
continually on hand, he could find time and spirit for orig- 
inal composition. The charm of all Goldsmith's literary- 
work is the easy grace of his pure English style. He was 
the only one of Johnson's contemporaries — Boswell ex- 
cepted — to remain uninfluenced by the ponderosity of John- 
son's Latin style. 

One of the greatest masters of English prose, Edmund 
Burke (1729-1797), was the son of a Dublin attorney, and 
was educated with a view to the English bar. At Trinity 
College, Dublin, however, he read, on lines of his own, 
poetry, philosophy, rhetoric, and history ; and these early 
studies determined and directed his career. The poetical 
spirit remained with him to the end of life, and thrills 
through his prose ; but it was only while an undergraduate 
that he practised verse, doing a very clever translation of 
Virgil's Second Georgic. At the age of twenty-one he 
came over to London, and was entered a student of the 
Middle Temple, but soon showed distaste of the legal pro- 
fession, and began to write. There is some obscurity about 
this part of his life ; he tells us that he was " sometimes in 
London, sometimes in remote parts of the country, some- 
times in France." At last in 1756 he settled down into 
matrimony and authorship. His chief publication of that 
year was the essay entitled An inquiry into the Origin of 
our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful. It may be re- 
garded as the first notable piece of art criticism in our lan- 
guage — the next in time and importance being Reynolds's 
Discourses on Fainting. This essay made Burke famous, 
and won for him the friendship and social fellowship of 
Johnson, Reynolds, Goldsmith, and other famous men of 
the age. With these men he founded the Literary Club, 
and was one of the most enthusiastic members — for Burke 
no less than Johnson was fond of social converse; the two 
were the best talkers of their day, and it was said that 
Burke only could keep the ball going with Johnson. In 
1759 Burke was editing The Annual Register. 



222 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

His political career is inextricably interwoven with liis 
literary career, and dominates it. It begins in 1761, when 
he became private secretary to the Secretary for Ireland. 
By-and-by he entered Parliament, where for the long period 
of nearly thirty years he took an active and mostly an in- 
dependent part in current politics. He was one of the lead- 
ing statesmen of his time, and one of the most distin- 
guished orators that ever addressed a British Parliament. 
He took Cicero for his model, and Goldsmith said of his 
method that he wound into his subject like a serpent. Yet 
latterly he spoke to an inattentive or empty House — he daz- 
zled rather than convinced. He filled high oflice, was pay- 
master of the forces under two administrations, and did 
great service on the side of justice and freedom — advo- 
cated the abolition of slavery, the independence of parlia- 
mentary representatives, the claims of Roman Catholics, hu- 
manity to India, and a policy of conciliation towards the 
American colonies before the great revolt of 1775. His 
speech on American conciliation is memorable for having 
called forth Johnson's reply of Taxation No Tyranny. His 
most brilliant appearance as an orator was in the trial of 
Warren Hastings. He opened the case (February, 1788) 
against the Governor of India in a speech which lasted four 
days, and he closed it, after the trial had run for nine years, 
in a speech of nine days' duration. A witness of the scene, 
Fanny Burney the novelist, whose sympathies were all for 
Hastings, has described the effect on herself of Burke's 
powerful attack : " He interested, he engaged, he at last 
overpowered me ; I felt my cause lost. I could hardly keep 
in my seat. My eyes dreaded a single glance towards a 
man so accused as Mr. Hastings ; I wanted to sink on the 
floor, that they might be saved so painful a sight. I had 
no hope he could clear himself; not another wish in his 
favour remained." 

The best literary prose of Burke was the product of the 
last seven years of his life : it lifts him to a level with Gib- 
bon. Excellent specimens of it are to be found in his Re- 
Jiection on the French Revolution^ a masterpiece of passion- 



OTHER ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS 223 

ately sincere and sublime eloquence ; and in his Letter to a 
JSfohle Lord (1796), in defence of his pension. The noble 
lord was the Duke of Bedford, whose own pensions for in- 
finitely less service greatly exceeded Burke's, and whom on 
that account he calls " leviathan among all the creatures of 
the Crown." 

Burke's power lay in invective and description. His gen- 
ius is essentially serious, lofty, aud commanding. He has 
Milton's deficiency of humor, and he has no pathos. His 
pomp and power of language are worthy to be named alonjx- 
side of Gibbon's ; yet his literary style gives him less dis- 
tinction than his range of thought as a philosopher, or his 
insight and services as a statesman. 

OTHER ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS 

Cowley is now read rather for his prose than for his verse, and 
the charm lies in his small volume of eleven Essays. They offer 
such a contrast to his poetry, in point of style, that Johnson's crit- 
icism of them is altogether justified: "No author ever kept his 
verse and his prose at a greater distance from each other. His 
thoughts are natural, and his style has a smooth and placid equal- 
ity. . , . Nothing is far-sought or hard-laboured : but all is easy 
without feebleness, and familiar without grossness." They win at 
once the reader's admiration for the writer, and his affection for 
the man. Among other subjects, they treat, with all the freshness 
of Montaigne, of Himself, the Garden, Solitude, the Shortness of 
Life and Uncertainty of Riches, and the Dangers of an Honest 
Man in much Company. In point and suggestiveness of observa- 
tion they remind one of the Essays of Bacon. 

Sir William Temple (1628-1699), to whom Swift in the earlier 
part of his life acted as amanuensis at Moor Park, was probably 
the most refined writer of prose of the seventeenth century. He 
is readable, not for his matter, but entirely for the lucidity, ease, 
and grace of his manner. In this respect he is an earher Addi- 
son. His best literary work is comprised in a volume of four 
Essays, published in 1693, of which the best are On Gardens and 
0)1 Poetry. 

Dryden's prose reflects the best qualities of his verse. He is 
strong, straightforward, and idiomatic beyond any writer of his 
century. Yet he is more readable for his matter than for his 
style. His subject is chiefly criticism, and he is to be regarded as 



224 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

the first in time of Englisli literary critics. His prose work takes 
the form, for the most part, of prefaces to bis plays and poems. 
The most notable of tbese are bis Essay on Heroic Plays, prefixed 
to The Conquest of Granada (1672), bis preface to All for Love 
(1678), and bis preface to The Fables (1700). But the best known 
is the Essay (in dialogue form) on Dramatic Poetry, published sep- 
arately in 1667. 

Eichard Bentley (1662-1742), Master of Trinity, was the foremost 
classical scholar and critic of bis time. Single-banded against a 
host of advocates, including Temple, Swift, and Atterbury, he de- 
molished the once famous Letters of Phalaris, which he proved to 
be spurious, in a style of controversy marked by rough, overbear- 
ing, irresistible strength of language and logic. 

Dr. John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), a Scottish physician settled in 
London, the friend and intimate associate of Pope, Gay, and 
Swift, and an active member of the Scribblerus Club, is memora- 
ble as the principal author of the Memoirs of Martinus Scribblerus, 
more especially as the writer of The History of John Bull. The 
latter would never have been written if the Tale of a Tub had not 
preceded it ; indeed, Arbutlmot's literary genius seems to have 
been inspired by Swift. The History of John Bull, written in rid- 
icule of the great Duke of INIarlborough, was at first attributed to 
Swift, and in this lies its greatest praise. 

Swift, born in the same year as Arbuthnot, first appeared as an 
essayist in A Tale of a Tub, wvitlQn in his thirtieth year. The 
Battle of the Books appeared in the following year. Both were 
first published in 1704 It was of A Tale of a Tub that Swift, 
near the end of his life, is reported to have said, " What a genius 
I once had !" The title is allegorical ; the tub was his own book, 
which be threw out for the amusement of the whales (the scep- 
tics), in order to save the ship (the Church). In the Tale, Peter, 
Martin, and Jack represent the Church of Kome, the Church of 
England, and the Presbyterian Church respectively — so called 
from St. Peter, Martin Luther, and John Calvin. It was this ex- 
tremely clever but unfortunate book that blasted Swift's hope of 
preferment. The Battle of the Books (the fight is supposed to have 
taken place in St. James's Library, where Bentley was librarian) 
is Swift's contribution to the controversy about the Letters of Pha- 
laris. In it occurs the famous fable of the Spider and the Bee, 
the former insect representing modern and the latter ancient learn- 
ing. In 1704 appeared Swift's Meditation upon a Broomstick, in 
ridicule of the style and manner- of Boyle. In 1708 and 1709 ap- 
peared, under the assumed name of Bickerstaff, Swift's Predic- 
tions for the Year 1708, his Account of Partridge's Death, and his 
audacious Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff. They were a practical 



DANIEL DEFOE 



225 



joke at the expense of John Partridge, an almanac-maker, upon 
whom Swift turned, for tlie amusement of London, the quack's 
own assumed gift of prophecy. Swift wrote innumerable politi- 
cal tracts and squibs. Most famous of all were his Drapier's 
Letters (1724), written to oppose the introduction of Wood's cop- 
per coinage into Ireland. These Letters made Swift immensely 
popular in Ireland. Swift's power was in satire, and the weapon 
he used was irony, which lie wielded with a grave and merciless 
mastery. 

NOVELISTS AND NARRATIVE WRITERS 

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), usually styled the father of 
the English novel, was the son of a Dissenting butcher, of 
Cripplegate, London, and his father had him educated for 
the Nonconformist Church. But the youth seems to have 
been born for journalism, and began his course as a political 
pamphleteer almost on attaining his majority. The course 
lasted till the accession of George I., and falls to be consid- 
ered first. It is marked by the production of innumerable 
articles on subjects of current interest, notably The True- 
born Englishman, a political satire in verse, which gained 
for its author the favor of King William, and The Shortest 
Way ivith the Dissenters, an ironical satire in prose, which 
was misunderstood by both Churchmen and Nonconformists, 
and landed its luckless author in the pillory and Newgate. 
In Newgate, in 1 704, he started The Review, a periodical on 
politics and subjects of general interest, issued thrice a week, 
and memorable as proving the forerunner of the more fa- 
mous and successful Tatler of Steele. On his release Defoe 
was employed by the government of Queen Anne on a mis- 
sion to Scotland, to promote the Union. He devoted his 
journal to the cause, and when the Union was accomplished 
he wrote its history. 

All through this period of political industry Defoe was 
carrying on some business or other, not one of which was 
successful. He began by being a soldier in Monmouth's re- 
bellion ; then for seven years he dealt in hosiery, till he had 
amassed a debt of £17,000; after some experience as a 
clerk, he undertook to manage and then bought a brick and 



226 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

tile factory at Tilbury, but it was mismanaged during Lis 
imprisonment in Newgate, and this venture, too, ended in 
failure. From all his difficulties Defoe had a trick of escap- 
ing by concealing himself. 

Prosperity began to shine on Defoe when he turned, at 
the age of fifty-five, from political to fictional writing. It 
was in 1719 when his thrilling book of adventure, Robinson 
Crusoe, came out. It was popular from the first. The story 
of a Scottish seaman, Alexander Selkirk, whom Dampier had 
left in 1704 on Juan Fernandez, and who stayed on that 
lonely island of the Pacific for nearly four and a half years 
without once seeing a human face, had been London talk for 
some time. Defoe saw the capabilities of Selkirk's story, 
and proceeded to embellish a narrative with many romantic 
incidents taken from the marooned seaman's adventures. 

Defoe wrote innumerable stories after Robinson Crusoe, 
but never anything nearly so good. Yet with servant-maids 
and sailors, and people of that class,, many of his other nar- 
ratives were equally popular. It is calculated that Defoe 
put forth altogether 254 distinct publications. It will be 
enough to name only a few of these : The Ai^parition of Mrs. 
Veal, a weirdly circumstantial ghost-story of the daylight ; 
Captain Jack, the history of a pickpocket who becomes a 
virtuous Virginian planter ; Roxana, or the Fortunate Mis- 
tress, and Her Maid Amy — the story of a French adventur- 
ess ; Moll Flanders, Memoirs of a Cavalier, History of the 
Plague, Captain Singleton, the Political History of the Devil, 
etc. 

The last years of Defoe's life exhibit him in the enjoy- 
ment of wealth, derived from his own writings and a gov- 
ernment pension, the possessor of a handsome house and 
a coach, and the father of three beautiful daughters and 
two undutiful sons. Yet he died concealed in lodgings at 
Greenwich, from which circumstance it has been inferred 
that he either went mad, or had been living beyond his 
means and felt the old terror of angry creditors. 

Clearness, simplicity, and an air of perfect truth secured 
by exhaustless detail and circumstantiality of statement, are 



JONATHAN SWIFT 227 

the qualities of Defoe's narrative style. He has little humor 
and less pathos, and shows no skill in constructing a plot. 

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) shares with Defoe the honor 
of having founded the great literary institution of the eigh- 
teenth century — the English novel. The narrative stories 
of Rohinson Crusoe and Lemuel Gulliver prepared the way 
for the elaborately constructed fictions of Richardson and 
Fielding. Swift is, besides, the most original and powerful 
prose writer of the first half of last century, as Johnson was 
the most prominent figure in the literature of the last half. 
Yet great as were his talents and his reputation, his life was 
the most unhappy, because the most disappointed, in the 
whole record of our literary history. Unlike Pope, whose 
whole soul was in his work for its own sake, Swift had no 
pure love for literature. All his endeavors to distinguish 
himself, as he confessed to Bolingbroke, "were only for want 
of a great title or fortune," and that he " might be used like 
a lord." 

He was born of English parents in Dublin a few months 
after his father's death, and was carried off by his nurse and 
kept at Whitehaven for three years, while his mother lived 
dependent on the bounty of her relatives in Leicestershire. 
At the age of seven he was placed at Kilkenny school, 
where Congreve was one of his playmates, and remained 
there till, at the age of fourteen, he was ready to go to 
Trinity College, Dublin. He proved a refractory, and latter- 
ly a riotous, student; and when he left college, in 1688, it 
was with such a pittance of academical learning as hardly 
warranted the degree of B.A., granted him by special grace. 
He had read, however, at his own pleasure, a good deal of 
history and poetry. 

He came home to his mother in Leicestershire, and by- 
and-by, interest having been made for him with Sir Will- 
iam Temple, a distant relative of his mother, he was received 
into that gentleman's house of Sheen Park in the capacity 
of amanuensis. His dependency on Temple, Avho was long 
in discovering his value, was irksome to his sensitive and 



'228 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

haughty spirit, and he made various unsuccessful efforts to 
escape from bondage. He tried to maintain himself in Ire- 
land ; he studied hard, and took the M.A. degree at Oxford; 
he wrote Pindaric Odes, which Dryden, his relative, seeing, 
declared to be destitute of merit or the promise of it; he 
took holy orders, and held the living of Kilroot, in County 
Down. Twice he left the service of Temple, but only to re- 
turn, on the last occasion driven back by the solitude of 
Kilroot, and attracted by the society and refinement of Moor 
Park. 

At Moor Park Swift had many advantages, among which 
were an excellent library, and intercourse with the foremost 
politicians and scholars of the day. It was at Moor Park he 
became known to King William, who advised him to be a 
soldier and promised him advancement. At Moor Park also 
he became acquainted with Esther Johnson, the " Stella " of 
his correspondence. His acquaintance with Hester Van- 
homrigh (Vanessa) began later — in 1708. It was during his 
last residence at Moor Park that Swift's literary career be- 
gan, with the brilliant prose satires, A Tale of a Tub and 
The Battle of the Books, both written in 1696-1697. When 
Temple died in 1699 he left Swift a legacy and the task of 
editing his MSS. 

In 1700 Swift was in Dublin as chaplain to the viceroy, 
Lord Berkeley, and was presented with various small livings, 
to one of which, Laracor, he retired, where he was joined by 
"Stella." In 1701 Swift, then on a visit to London, pub- 
lished his first political pamphlet, written in the Whig inter- 
est. During many visits that followed he cultivated the ac- 
quaintance of Addison, Gay, and Pope ; and was soon, more 
especially from 1710 to 1713 (as revealed by the Journal to 
Stella), the central figure in both the world of politics and 
the world of letters in London. Of his many publications 
written in the reign of Queen Anne may be mentioned the 
ironical Argument against Abolishing Christianity (1708) ; 
Project for the Advancement of Religion (1709) ; The Predic- 
tions of Isaac Bickerstaff, relative to Partridge ; a volume of 
Miscellanies (1711) in prose and verse, the verse including 



SAMUEL RICHARDSON 229 

Baucis and Philemon in octosyllabics, and a realistic de- 
scription of a City Shower in heroics. 

After the fall, in 1714, of the Tory party, to which, dis- 
gusted with his neglect by the Whigs, he had offered the 
great services of his influence and his pen, Swift saw there 
was no more room for him in London, or hope of preferment 
beyond the deanery of St. Patrick's, which he had received 
from the Tories ; and, retiring to Dublin, commenced — as he 
said — "Irishman for the rest of his life." His chief literary 
work during his settlement in Ireland was The Drapier's Let- 
ters (1724) and Gulliver's Travels (1726-1727). Before his 
death, Swift, as he had predicted from a vertigo and deaf- 
ness which afflicted his youth and increased with his years, 
went completely mad, and spoke to none for the last three 
years of his life. In appearance Swift was a tall, strong, 
dark-complexioned man, with an aquiline nose, and thick 
eyebrows overarching a pair of flashing blue eyes. 

The greatest of his works is the narrative of Gulliver''s 
Travels, though his style is seen at its best in The Battle of 
the Books and A Tale of a Tub. His definition of a good 
style was proper words in proper places, and it well describes 
his own. Whatever he has to say he says swiftly, concisely, 
and clearly. He was a master of ironical humor. His satire, 
though fierce, is legitimate till disease affects his brain, 
when he cherishes a strange and hideous misanthropy, which 
he expresses with all the force of a powerful and uncleanly 
imagination. The last part of Gulliver's Travels is a foul in- 
sult to the whole human race. The other parts, the voyages 
to Lilliput and Brobdingnag (which satirize the politics and 
customs of England and Europe), and the voyage to the 
floating aerial island of Laputa, which ridicules the philoso- 
phers, are free of the charge of brutality, but are often of- 
fensive to good taste. 

The first great English novelist, Samuel Richardson 
(1689-1761), was the son of a Derbyshire joiner, and came 
up to London at the age of seventeen to learn to be a printer. 
He was a model apprentice, and when he had fairly started 



230 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

on a prosperous course of printing on his own account, mar- 
ried his master's daughter, became printer of the Journals 
of the House of Commons, and ultimately was elected Mas- 
ter of the Stationers' Company. He was turned of fifty when 
the idea occurred to him of having any higher connection 
with literature than the merely mechanical one of printing 
it. Pamela, published in 1740, was the outcome of his de- 
sire to preserve the happiness and improve the morality of 
domestic servants by warning them of temptation. It is the 
story of a serving-girl who, by perseverance in virtue, becomes 
mistress where she had been maid. The story is told in let- 
ters. A far greater success every way was Richardson's 
next work (1748) — the pathetic and tragic story, also written 
in the letter form, of a pure and pious young lady, Clarissa 
Harlowe, and her unfortunate persecutor, Robert Lovelace, 
an admirable representative of the brilliant, but unscrupu- 
lous, gay gentleman of the time. Richardson's third novel, 
Sir Charles Grandison (1754), is an elaborate attempt to 
draw a full-length portrait of the perfect gentleman. The re- 
sult showed that, while the author was amply possessed of a 
patient dexterity at unravelling human motives and follow- 
ing the development of human passions, his conception of 
character was truer to life, and more estimable, on the female 
than on the male side of humanity. Richardson (described 
as a plump little man of a melancholy temperament) was a 
great favorite with the ladies, a coterie of whom consoled 
him for the affront offered to his moral dignity by Fielding. 
He tells us himself that from boyhood the society of women 
gave him most delight, and that next to that was the de- 
light of writing letters. One fault of his novels is their 
inordinate length — Clarissa is in seven volumes. The 
style, though not without a certain formal regularity, is 
often prolix beyond endurance, especially in those passages 
which are not sustained by the interest of the history. 
The interest is altogether psychological, and is often pro- 
found ; the moral motive of his hovels is beyond ques- 
tion, and on that account they were recommended from the 
pulpit. 



HENRY FIELDING 231 

Greater and more popular, and of a healthier if coarser 
genius than Richardson, was Henry Fielding (1 707-1754), 
who may be regarded as the greatest novelist of England. 
He was born in Somerset of aristocratic connections, and 
was educated at Eton and Leyden. About the age of twen- 
ty he began in London to write for the stage, and before 
he was thirty had written without much success more than a 
score of light comic pieces, not one of which is of any inter- 
est now. It was evident that playwriting was not his way 
to fame and fortune, and he returned to his interrupted 
studies of the law, and was called to the bar in 1740. That 
very year appeared Pamela, which Fielding, disgusted with 
the virtue of the book and the method of its reward, re- 
solved to burlesque, and accordingly began The Adventures 
of Joseph Andrews. Joseph he pretended to be the brother 
of Pamela, and intended him for a paragon of the family 
type. This novel is memorable, among other merits, for the 
creation of the character of Parson Adams. Fielding's next 
novel (1743) was Jonathan Wild the Great, a story of New- 
gate and the gallows. In 1749 appeared his masterpiece. 
The Histori/ of Tom Jones. The year before, Fielding had 
been secured in an independence in life through the good 
offices of Lord Lyttelton, by being made a justice of the 
peace for AVestminster. He was most attentive to his duties 
as a magistrate, performed as they were under the burden 
of gout and asthma, and in the weakness of premature phys- 
ical decay. Fielding in his youth was a tall, strong man, 
with a vast capacity for enjoyment, but he had undermined 
his powers by reckless rather than immoral indulgence. In 
1751 appeared the tenderest of his four novels, Amelia, full 
of a thoughtfulness which is not found saddening the genial 
pages of Tom Jones. Two years afterwards he went to Bath 
to recruit ; but a longer journey was thought necessary, and 
he proceeded to Portugal, in hope of being benefited by the 
voyage and the milder climate. He landed at Lisbon, but 
only lived two months longer, leaving behind him when he 
died a journal of the voyage. 

Unlike Richardson, Fielding employs the ordinary direct 



232 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

method of historical narration; he further diversifies his 
narrative with dialogue and natural descriptions, and pre- 
sents a truer, robuster, and healthier view of the actual 
world of his time than Richardson. The plot of Tom Jones 
is admired by all critics for its constructive ability ; the 
style, especially in the chapter that introduces each of the 
eighteen books, is a model of free, forcible, and suggestive 
writing; but the morality has been called in question. A 
blemish in the art of Fielding is his love of episode. Tom 
Jones gives us in Sophia Western one of the most pleasing 
characters in English fiction ; her father, a type of the loud, 
fox-hunting squire of the time, is no less graphically drawn 
at full length ; while the misadventures of Partridge supply 
a great deal of the comic mirth of the most genial and truth- 
ful novel of last century. 

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) holds a unique place among 
English novelists. His style, the simplicity of which is the 
result of elaborate art and affectation, is the most marked 
of any prose writer of the eighteenth century; while his 
method in the conduct of a story is altogether new and 
original. He seems to avoid the construction of a plot, yet 
his characters are so exquisitely drawn and so consistent- 
ly maintained in themselves and their mutual relations, his 
endless digressions so illustrative, and his very pauses and 
abrupt transitions so eloquent, that the little world whose 
humors and fancies he portrays is suggested with a clear- 
ness and picturesqueness not often attained by the most 
rigid attention to the rules of direct explicit narration. 

Sterne was the third child of a wandering army officer, 
and happened to be born while the regiment to which his 
father was attached was in barracks at Clonmel. His father 
was killed in a duel in Jamaica, and Sterne was educated 
at the expense of a cousin, at Jesus College, Cambridge. 
Entering the Church, the profession for which he was least 
fitted, he was presented by a rich uncle to the living of 
Sutton in Yorkshire, and settled there in 1738. For the 
next twenty-one years he remained an obscure country par- 



TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT 233 

son, spending his time in fiddling, farming, and philander- 
ing, to the scandalons neglect of his pastoral duties. In his 
forty-seventh year he suddenly became famous by the pub- 
lication of Tristram Shandy. His dissipation in London, 
where he was lionized for the last seven years of his life, 
hastened the ruin of his health, and twice, in 1762 and 
again in 1765, he sought the benefit of travel in France and 
Italy. He was in London in 1768, seeing after the publica- 
tion of The Sentimental Journey of Mr. Yorick, when he 
died in lodgings, surrounded, as he had wished, by strangers 
only. 

Sterne's humor is of the most subtle kind, and often 
springs from situations of lightly veiled indecency. His 
pathos is equally delicate, with a suspicion that haunts the 
reader that much of it is unmanly sentimentalism. Yet the 
episode of Le Fevre seldom fails to draw tears, while the 
characters of Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim, Dr. Slop and 
Widow Wadman, are amusing creations of genuine humor. 
Sterne was a notorious plagiarist, and owed obligations to 
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy which he had the effron- 
tery to suppress. His work as an artist in prose is superior 
to his worth as a man or his reputation as a parson. 

The story of the life of Tobias George Smollett (1721- 
1771), the third, after Richardson and Fielding, of the great 
English novelists of last century, is scarcely less full of ad- 
venture than one of his own fictions. Only an outline of the 
story can be presented here. Smollett was of a good Dum- 
bartonshire family, grandson of Sir James Smollett, a Scot- 
tish judge, and heir of entail to the rich family estates in 
the Vale of Leven. To these he would have succeeded if 
he had lived four years longer than he did. As it was, he 
began life provided only with a good education auvi excellent 
natural abilities. Unhappily a constitutional irritability of 
temper prevented his success in life. Apprenticed at first to 
a surgeon in Glasgow, he soon found his way to London, 
meaning to pursue a literary career, but he was obliged to 
accept a post as surgeon's mate on board a ship which took 



234 '^iiE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

part in the disastrous expedition to Carthagena in 1741. 
He was disgusted with the service, and after a sojourn in 
the West Indies turned up once more in London, bent more 
than ever on trying his lot in literature. With the profes- 
sion of letters he sought to combine, but without success, 
the practice of medicine. 

In his twenty-seventh year he published his first novel, 
Roderick Random, a narrative of adventure in which he 
utilized his own experiences, notably life as he found it 
on board of a man-of-war. It took the public taste, and 
was followed in 1751 by Peregrine Pickle, a maturer work, 
equally buoyant and even more boisterous, and marked by 
greater inequalities of style and incident. A gloomy novel, 
the adventures of the rascally Ferdinand Count Fathom, fol- 
lowed in 1753; and Smollett then turned his attention to 
translations, and afterwards to history. His version of Don 
Quixote was made in 1755, and his Complete History of 
England from the Landing of Julius Ccesar to the Treaty of 
Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1758. The History was written with the 
vivacity of his novels, and Smollett found himself both 
famous and in the possession of means ; but with fortune 
came failing health, domestic afiliction, and a querulous dis- 
satisfaction with everything and everybody. He travelled 
on the Continent for two years, and ultimately settling at 
Leghorn, wrote the Expedition of Humphrey Clinker (l77l), 
the best of his novels, written in the form of letters which 
describe the adventures of a family travelling in England 
and Scotland, and published only a few weeks before his 
death. Smollett was unhappy in his political writings, which 
only brought him into trouble. A few poems, notably his 
Ode to Independence, his Ode to Leven Water, and The Tears 
of Scotland, the last-named a lament for the unhappy termi- 
nation of the Forty-five, reveal a power of personification, 
natural description, and lyrical pathos of no mean order. 

While Smollett occasionally rises above Fielding, he does 
not maintain the same high level, and though free of digres- 
sion, to which Fielding was prone, he is of coarser tastes. 
He is remarkable for a variety of incidents and characters 



GILBERT BURNET 



235 



almost bewildering in their abundance, and expressed in an 
easy, flowing style which is never obscure or tedious. If 
Fielding anticipated Thackeray, Smollett was the forerunner 
of Dickens. His love of fun leads him often to the verge 
of caricature. He painted a whole gallery of original char- 
acters, among which are the life-like portraits of Squire 
Bramble and Lieutenant Lesmahago, Commodore Trunnion 
and Jack Hatchway, Morgan and Tom Bowling, besides 
Strap, and Pipes, and Winifred Jenkins. 

Other narrative writers or novelists of this period include : 

Addison, in virtue of his portrayal of Sir Roger de Coverley and 
the town and country friends of that worthy knight. 

Johnson, whose Basselas, published in 1759, may be described as 
a didactic allegory or romance on the choice of life. It is the 
story of a prince's flight from the monotonous pleasures of The 
Happy Valley, his adventures in and around Cairo, his conversa- 
tions with Nekayah and old Iralac, who accompanied him, and 
their ultimate return to Abyssinia. 

Horace Walpole (1717-1797), whose Castle of Otranto, a mediaeval 
romance, was published in 1765. It was the first historical ro- 
mance, and so was the forerunner of the Waverley novels. 

Goldsmith, whose Vicar of Wakefield, published in 1766, slowly 
made its way into favor, but keeps the popularity it at last ac- 
quired in virtue of its charmingly sweet and fresh delineations of 
idyllic English life, its quiet and gentle humor, and its flowing 
and graceful style. 

Fanny Burney (1753-1840), whose comic novel Ecelina, in 1778, 
marks the commencement of the society novel. She wrote other 
two novels, Cecilia and Camilla, the former dull, and the latter 
long since dead. 



HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS 

Gilbert Burnet (1643-1715) was born in Edinburgh, edu- 
cated at Aberdeen, where he graduated M.A. before he was 
fifteen, and, entering the Church, became parish minister of 
Saltoun in Haddingtonshire, and shortly afterwards Profess- 
or of Divinity in Glasgow University. He had the refusal 
of a bishopric before he w^as thirty. Leaving Scotland, he 
obtained several appointments in London, where he speedily 



236 / THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

became the most popular preacher of the day. His sermons, 
which used to be applauded during their delivery, often ran 
out two hour-glasses. Burnet had personal qualifications to 
recommend him to popular favor as a preacher; he was a 
big, brawny, dark-complexioned man, with a strong voice, a 
frank manner, a sound heart, and broad sympathies. He 
made a great name in 1679 by the commencement of his 
History of the Reformation, and was again offered a bishop- 
ric. He declined the honor, but with more than a bishop's 
boldness reproved the king for his vices, and was stripped 
of his offices. He then attached himself to the court of the 
Prince of Orange at The Hague, and when the revolution 
occurred came over as King William's chaplain, and was 
made Bishop of Salisbury. He discharged all the duties of 
his office with a conscientious care, which marked the whole 
course of his busy and ambitious life, and yet found time to 
write his famous work, The History of My Own Times. He 
died in 1715, and the History appeared, agreeably to the in- 
junctions of his will, some eight years later. No person de- 
sirous of knowing at first hand the political and social affairs 
of the century to which Burnet belonged can afford to neg- 
lect this gossipy but truthful record. What Horace Wal- 
pole said of it is true : " It seems as if the author had just 
come from the king's closet, or from the apartments of the 
men he describes, and was telling you in plain, honest terms 
what he had just seen and heard." 

Distinguished as an essayist, a philosopher, and a histo- 
rian, David Hume (1711-1776) was born in Edinburgh, the 
younger son of the proprietor of Ninewells, near Duns, in 
Berwickshire. He was educated at Edinburgh University 
with a view to the legal profession ; but showing little incli- 
nation to that profession, he was placed with a mercantile 
house in Bristol, from which, having no talent for business, 
he retired to France, where in the society of Jesuits he gave 
himself up, on the slender allowance made him by his fam- 
ily, to the study of philosophy. The first-fruits of this 
study appeared in his twenty-eighth year in a Treatise of 



DAVID HUME 237 

Human Nature. The book attracted little or no attention 
at first, and even when remodelled and reproduced in 1748, 
under the title of An Inquiry Concerning the Human Under- 
standing, was slow in finding readers. Yet the work marks 
an epoch in the history of philosophical thought ; its ten- 
dency was to universal scepticism, to the belief that there can 
be no belief ; and it was to counteract its destructive effects 
that the modern schools of Scottish and German metaphys- 
ics have been established. In 1741-1742 appeared his Moral, 
Political, and Literary Essays, which, though written in a 
style the lucidity of which could hardly fail to make him 
popular, reveal him as an opponent of the idea of popular 
government. 

In 1745 Hume undertook the guardianship of a Scottish 
nobleman of weak intellect, a singular office of which he 
was soon glad to be rid. He next tried to become Profess- 
or of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh University, but failed ; 
and in 1747, accepting the post of secretary to General St. 
Clair, he accompanied his chief first on a military expedi- 
tion, and afterwards on an embassy to Vienna and Turin. 
During those wanderings he took notes of his impressions 
of the places which he visited, and the people with whom 
he came in contact. By-and-by we find him back again, a 
scholarly recluse among his books in his mother's country- 
house at Ninewells; and here, in 1751, he produced his In- 
quiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and, in 1752, his 
Political Discourses. In the former of these works he avows 
himself a utilitarian, taking up the position that the morality 
of an action is determined only by its utility. The latter is 
memorable for its suggestive pronouncements on political 
economy, notably its enunciation of the principles of free- 
trade, a doctrine afterwards more amply unfolded by Adam 
Smith. 

In 1752 Hume was appointed librarian of the Advocates' 
Library in Edinburgh, an appointment which he valued sole- 
ly as it gave him access to a magnificent collection of books. 
His residence was now in Edinburgh in a house of his own, 
where he lived in a style that was opulent to a man of his 



238 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

economical habits and moderate tastes. And here, in these 
circumstances, and much esteemed for his gentle manners 
and sociable qualities, he began his History of England, 
working his way backward from the Stuarts to the Tudors, 
and ultimately to the time of the Roman occupation. The 
first part of the work appeared in 1754, the last in 1762. 
In 1763 Hume was in France as secretary to the English 
ambassador, and found himself at last famous and happy 
among the most eminent thinkers and savans of Paris. It 
was at this time he had the famous quarrel with Rousseau. 
On his return to England, after an absence of three years, he 
was appointed Under-Secretary of State, an office which he 
held for three years. In 1769 he came back to Edinburgh, 
where he passed the rest of his life in literary and social 
ease, and even affluence (on £1000 a year), in his quiet 
bachelor's way. On his death-bed he told Adam Smith that 
he had every reason to die contented. 

Hume's History is as remarkable for its errors in matters 
of fact as for its lucidity and directness of style. His prej- 
udice in favor of the Stuarts and against the Tudors, his 
entire want of enthusiasm for popular liberty, and his rever- 
ence for settled authority are among his faults as a his- 
torian ; his' merits lie in the clearness and dignity of his 
narrative, the balance of his sentence, and the force and 
picturesqueness of his phrase. He wrote to entertain rather 
than to instruct. 

Ten years younger than Hume, to whom in style he bears 
a strange resemblance, "William Robertson (1721-1793) was 
born in the manse of Borthwick, in Mid-Lothian, removed 
with his parents to Edinburgh at the age of twelve, and was 
educated in that city for the Scottish Church. His first 
charge was a parish in East Lothian where, two years after 
his appointment, was fought the battle of Prestonpans. The 
young clergyman had offered his services as a volunteer to 
Sir John Cope shortly before the battle. The large leisure 
of a country minister was devoted by Robertson to historical 
study and composition ; at the same time he took an active 



EDWARD GIBBON 239 

part in tlie General Assemblies, speaking often and elo- 
quently on the Moderate side of Church politics. In 1758 
he was nominated to one of the city charges in Edinburgh, 
and in the following year published his History of Scotland. 
It made him famous at once, and honors were heaped upon 
him beyond all precedent in the literary history of his coun- 
try. The highest of these were the offices of principal of 
Edinburgh University and historiographer royal. In 1769 
appeared his History of the Emperor Charles V., for which 
he was paid £4500; and in 1777 his History of America. 

Robertson, in private life, was distinguished for the grace 
and urbanity of his manner, his amiable disposition, and his 
conversational powers. His style has most of the best qual- 
ities of Hume's, the result in both of French culture ; but 
Hume had the advantage of having mixed much and famil- 
iarly in the refined society of French men of letters and 
taste, and, in consequence, there is in his style a sense of 
well-bred ease and freedom which Robertson seems to lack. 
Robertson's style is regular where Hume's is varied ; and 
somewhat stiff, but without loss of dignity, where Hume's is 
easy. There is, however, more feeling, and even pathos, in 
Robertson, especially in the passages of his Scottish History 
dealing with the miseries of the unfortunate Mary. His de-. 
scriptions, too, are more splendidly imaginative, and, as in 
the account of Columbus preparing to take possession of the 
New World, impressive with something of the pomp of sol- 
emn poetry. A remarkable feature of both Hume's and 
Robertson's English is the almost total absence of Scotti- 
cisms. Modern research has found much with which to 
supplement and correct Robertson's History of Scotland, 
but his History of America must always remain a classic; 
while his History of the Emperor Charles V. is written with a 
general sagacity of truth which is hardly affected by several 
faulty details. 

The greatest of English historians is Edward Gibbon 
(1737-1794). The story of his life is best told by himself; 
it is an absolutely true account, and is further interesting 



240 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

from the style in whicli it is written. He was born at Put- 
ney of good parentage ; was the only survivor of a family of 
seven children ; was educated in a desultory fashion at home 
under the care of an aunt ; and was sent to Magdalen Col- 
lege, Oxford, at the age of fifteen, with " a stock of erudi- 
tion that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ig- 
norance of which a school -boy would have been ashamed." 
There he spent fourteen months — the most idle and unprofit- 
able, he said, of his whole life. He was dismissed from Ox- 
ford on becoming a Papist. His father sent him abroad for 
reconversion to the Protestant faith — a result attained in 
about eighteen months in the house of a Calvinist clergy- 
man of Lausanne, in Switzerland. He continued to board 
with this clergyman for about five years, reading with the 
utmost relish and constancy, and storing a memory of aston- 
ishing capacity with ideas of all kinds, especially ancient 
Latin and modern French. It was during those happy do- 
mestic years of private study that his love adventure hap- 
pened, with the young lady afterwards famous in French 
history as Madame Necker. At twenty-one Gibbon returned 
to England, where he continued his studies as well as he 
could, and gained some knowledge of the military life and 
art by entering the Hampshire militia, in which he remained 
for two and a half years. He did not like the duties ; " but 
the captain of the Hampshire grenadiers was not useless to 
the historian of the Roman Empire." 

Li 1763, the militia being disbanded. Gibbon was again 
free, and made use of his freedom by fleeing to the Conti- 
nent. At last he reached Rome. Here, one historical au- 
tumn evening, a great idea struck him like an inspiration. 
"It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat 
musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted 
friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that 
the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first 
started into my mind." Full of the idea, he returned home 
and began to collect materials for the great work. In l7V0 
his father died, and finding himself threatened with pover- 
ty. Gibbon removed from Hampshire to a quiet bachelor's 



EDWARD GIBBON 241 

home in London, where he settled, and pursued his histori- 
cal studies in secret. In 1774 he entered Parliament as 
► member for Liskeard; but was content for eight years to 
record a silent vote in support of England's right to tax the 
American colonies. In 1776 the first volume of his His- 
tory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was pub- 
lished, and was at once immensely successful; it was on 
every table. In one respect alone it gave offence ; the tone 
of two chapters, the fifteenth and sixteenth, gave rise to the 
suspicion that he was sceptical of the divine origin of Chris- 
tianity. The next two volumes were published, and the 
fourth was ready, when, with a view to stricter economy, 
he removed to Lausanne in 1783; and there the work was 
completed in the summer of 1787. He has recorded the 
circumstances connected with the completion of his mighty 
undertaking. " It was on the day, or rather night, of the 
27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, 
that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer- 
house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took 
several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which 
commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the 
mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the 
silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and 
all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emo- 
tions of joy in the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the 
establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon hum- 
bled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by 
the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and 
agreeable companion." Gibbon did not long survive. His 
life-work was accomplished. In 1793 he was glad to leave 
Lausanne, where the French Revolution had broken up the 
society in which he had found so much pleasure. He died 
in London prematurely old and exhausted by chronic dis- 
ease. 

In youth Gibbon was "a thin little figure with a large 
head"; in maturity he was a huge, cumbrous man, over- 
loaded with flesh ; one of his biographers describes him as 
grotesquely hideous, with a mouth like a round hole situated 

16 



242 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

nearly in the centre of his visage. In private life he was 
shy and hesitating among strangers, talked brilliantly among 
friends, and was constant in his friendships. 

One great merit of Gibbon's history is its general accu- 
racy. He is the only historian of last century whom modern 
research has not set aside. The range of his work is from 
the time of the Antonines to the Fall of Constantinople ; the 
erudition which he displays over the whole of that exten- 
sive and varied field is almost superhuman. Nearly equal 
to his vast and specific information is the charm of his style, 
which might in one word be described as magnificent.' The 
narrative goes on with an easy, stately, uniform strength ; 
the descriptions are vivid, and splendid with the glow of a 
warm imagination ; the diction, which has been well called 
Latin English, is in full harmony with the dignity of the 
general theme. He divides with Burke the honor of being 
the greatest prose writer of the eighteenth century. 

It is usual to regard James Boswell (1740-1795) as a con- 
ceited fopling of average abilities, but the man who appre- 
ciated the moral grandeur of Johnson at its true worth and 
wrote the best biography in literature deserves a better de- 
scription. With something of the vanity and fussy vivacity 
of Pepys, he carried beneath these obvious characteristics a 
simple and honest heart, and he was a genuine literary artist 
in catching " the manners living as they rise " and express- 
ing them with dramatic force and fidelity, and in a style as 
little influenced by Johnsonese as even Goldsmith's. 

He was born in Edinburgh of a good family, son of a 
Scottish judge, and heir to the estate of Auchinleck, in Ayr- 
shire. He was trained for the Scottish bar, but neglected 
his profession for the society of Johnson, to whom he was 
introduced in 1763 in a bookseller's back parlor in circum- 
stances graphically recorded in the biography of Johnson. 
While still young he studied at Utrecht, and made a tour 
of Southern Europe, visiting Rousseau in Switzerland, and 
Paoli in Corsica. In 1773 he was made a member of the 
Literary Club, and set out with Johnson on a visit to the 



JAMES BOSWELL-OTHER WRITERS 243 

Highlands and Islands or Scotland. He took notes of the 
journey, and published A Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides 
in 1V85. Almost from his first introduction to Johnson he 
kept a diary of the words and actions of the sage, letting 
nothing escape him that could illustrate his subject; and 
the result was the famous biographical masterpiece, the Life 
of Samuel Johnson, published in 1791. The method of 
this Life was then still new to biography ; it was, by corre- 
spondence and reported conversations, to make the subject 
tell its own story. Probably a hint of the method was sug- 
gested to Boswell by Mason's Life and Letters of Gray. 
Johnson's fame owes more to Boswell's biography of him 
than to RasselaSj or the Dictionary, or the Lives of the Poets. 

Other writers of this period who have either composed history 
or collected materials for it include : 

John Evelyn (1620-1706), whose diary extends from 1641 to 1697, 
and, like that of his friend Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), which goes 
from 1660 to 1669, flashes many a valuable and entertaining side- 
light on the social and political life of England in the time of the 
Stuarts. 

George Fox (1624-1690), and WiUiam Penn (1644-1718), who wrote 
on the principles and progress of Quakerism. 

John Aubrey (1626-1697), the too credulous antiquary, and his 
friend Anthony a Wood (1632-1695), the antiquarian annalist of 
Oxford. 

John Strype (1643-1737), the historian of the Church and Church 
dignitaries. 

Conyers Middleton (1683-1750), who wrote an admirable Life of 
Cicero, published in 1741. 

John, Lord Hervey (1696-1743), the Sporus of Pope's satire, author 
of Memoirs of the Reign of George IL 

Smollett, the novelist, whose History of England has been already 
mentioned ; part of it— from 1688 to 1760— is usually printed as a 
sequel to Hume's History of England. 

William Tytler, of Woodhouselee (1711-1792), who sought to vin- 
dicate the character of Queen Mary against the charges of Robert- 
son and Hume. 

Dr. John Campbell (1709-1775), the friend of Johnson, who wrote 
the History of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene. 

Goldsmith, who in 1763 published a History of England in a series 
of letters. 

Lord Hailes (1726-1792), who wrote the Annals of Scotland. 



244 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

William Roscoe (1753-1831), whose Life of Lorenzo the Magnificent, 
published la 1796, occupies the interval between Gibbon's Fall of 
the Roman Empire and Robertson's History of Charles V. In 1805 
he published his Life of Leo X. 

William Mitford (1744-1827), whose History of Greece was pub- 
lished between 1784 and 1810. 

James Currie (1756-1805), the first (1800) and one of the best of 
the biographers of Burns. 



RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS 

It is a remarkable fact in the history of our literature that 
the most popular book in England, next to the Bible, was 
the production of an illiterate man, born in the humblest 
rank of life. That book is The Pilgrim'' 8 Progress. Next 
to the poetry of Milton, it is the finest and most character- 
istic literary outcome of English Puritanism. As a story it 
ranks on a level with Pobinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Trav- 
els ; and, if not the most perfect, it is the most successful 
allegory in the language. The Faerie Queene not excepted. 
The author, John Bunyan (1628-1688), was born at Elstow, 
in Bedfordshire, the son of a tinker, and bred to his father's 
trade. He has represented his life m youth as vicious and 
dissolute in the extreme • but there is exaggeration in the 
description, due to the sensitiveness of his own conscience 
and the vividness of his own imagination. The catalogue 
of his youthful sins, as drawn up by himself, included lying 
and swearing, bell-ringing and dancing, and playing hockey 
on Sundays. In his seventeenth year, the Civil War being 
then in progress, he became, for about a twelvemonth, a 
soldier in the " New Model," and was present at the siege 
of Leicester, where he had a narrow escape. His military 
experiences he afterwards turned to good account, more 
especially in his second great allegory, The Holy War. 
Shortly after returning to his trade he married a very poor 
but pious and affectionate woman, whose influence gradu- 
ally induced hind to break off his bad habits and lead a re- 
ligious life. 

In 1653 lie left th.e Church of England to become a Bap- 



JOHN BUNYAN 245 

tist, and a few years afterwards, having in the meantime 
passed through a period of tormenting fears to perfect se- 
renity of soul, began to preach in the villages of Bedford- 
shire. The gift of a homely, direct, and picturesque speech, 
combined with moral earnestness and richness of spiritual 
experience, gave him unusual power over the masses, and 
people flocked to hear his sermons. His figure, too, was not 
without attractiveness. Against the fashion of his time he 
wore his own hair, which was red, and a heavy mustache ; 
and united in singular contrast gentle manners and an affable 
disposition to a tall, gaunt figure and rough if not ferocious 
features. Extremely popular with the common people, he 
was ridiculed and opposed by the regular clergy, who made 
various attempts to silence him. At last, in 1660, on a 
charge of preaching in unlicensed conventicles, he was im- 
prisoned in Bedford jail, where the next twelve years and 
more of his life were passed, but in no ve,ry rigorous con- 
finement. He employed the time in ministering to his fel- 
low-prisoners, in reading the Bible and Foxe's Book of Mar- 
tyrs, above all in writing religious tracts and treatises, Grace 
Abounding and The Hohj City, and, most noteworthy of all, 
the first and greatest part of The Pilgrim's Progress. Mean- 
while he worked for himself and his family, his wife and 
poor children, " especially my poor third child, who lay 
nearer to my heart than all besides," by tagging thread 
laces and selling them at the jail door to passers-by. 

By the Declaration of Indulgence he, along with thou- 
sands of other Nonconformists imprisoned all over England, 
was released in 16*72, and resumed the life of an itinerant 
preacher, with regular duties in the Baptist chapel at Bed- 
ford. At the same time he continued the use of his pen. 
Besides publishing the first part of The Pilgrim's Progress, 
the story of Christian, in 1678, he wrote the second part, 
the story of Christiana and her children, printed in 1684; 
The Life and Death of Mr. Badman, a realistic story told 
in dialogue, printed in 1680; and The Holy War, printed 
in 1682. His fame as a preacher began to be known 
in London ; he became the most influential of the Noncon- 



246 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

formists, and was familiarly spoken of as Bishop Bunyan. 
He died in a friend's house in London from the effects of 
a chill caught in a long ride through a rainstorm. He was 
returning from Reading, whither he had gone to reconcile 
a father and a rebellious son. 

The features of The Pilgrim's Progress which have made 
it the successful book it is are the romantic and spiritual 
interest of the tale ; the vividness of the portraiture, and the 
variety of types portrayed ; the absorbing nature, diversity, 
and number of the incidents ; the dramatic force and con- 
sistency of the dialogues ; the touches of pathos, humor, 
and sublimity ; the glimpses of English scenery and society, 
utterly true to the life ; and the naturalness of the narrative 
in simple, unstudied words of vernacular and Bible English. 

One of the ablest advocates for civil and religious liberty, 
but better known as the founder of English philosophy on 
a basis of common-sense, was John Locke (1632-1704), 
born in Somersetshire, near Bristol, the son of a captain in 
the Parliamentary army. He was educated in Westminster 
and Christ Church College, Oxford. The bent of his mind 
was to the experimental philosophy of Bacon and Descartes 
rather than to the system of Aristotle as it was then taught, 
and he studied for the medical profession, but, owing to an 
asthmatical affection, never practised. He was a lecturer of 
his college when, in 1666, he became acquainted with Lord 
Ashley, afterwards the first Earl of Shaftesbury (the Achit- 
ophel of Dryden's great satire). With this astute poli- 
tician he went to reside in the capacity of friend, secretary, 
and family tutor. He so identified himself with this house- 
hold that his fortunes fluctuated with those of his patrons. 
Now he held office in England under Shaftesbury's admin- 
istration ; now he shared Shaftesbury's exile in the Low 
Countries. In 1683 Shaftesbury died, and Locke continued 
to stay in Holland, where he thought and wrote on sub- 
jects connected with the government of Church and State, 
the principles of education, and the nature, operations, laws, 
and limitations of the mind. Within one notable year. 



LOCKE-BERKELEY 



247 



1689-90, when he was now on the verge of sixty, he pub- 
lished his greatest works : Letters Concerning Toleration, two 
Treatises of Government, and the famous Essay Concerning 
Human Understanding. He had returned to England in 
the year of the Revolution, and was soon rewarded by King 
William with a comraissionership of appeals, followed in 
1695 by a coramissionership of trade and plantations. His 
book on education was published two years before the lat- 
ter appointment, and was followed at various intervals by 
treatises on theological subjects. Ill-health compelled him 
in 1700 to quit office and London, and he was staying at 
Gates in Essex, in the house of a friend, when four years 
later his busy life came to a peaceful close. 

Locke's work as a mental philosopher was to clear away 
the unfounded speculations of previous thinkers by an in- 
dependent and common-sense investigation of the faculties 
and phenomena of the mind. He denied, and, as some 
think, disproved, the doctrine of innate ideas, or intuitions, 
and sought to trace all human knowledge and authoritative 
belief to the operation of the senses and the process of rea- 
soning — to the two sources of Sensation and Reflection. 
His style is singularly unattractive ; it is clear and convinc- 
ing, but colorless and monotonous. 

To Locke succeeded George Berkeley (1685-1753), the 
most brilliant of his disciples, and the most eminent philoso- 
pher between him and Hume. In one respect his life offers 
a great contrast to that of his fellow-countryman and friend, 
Swift ; the bishopric for which Swift all his life sighed came 
to Berkeley unsought and undesired. He was one of the 
most amiable, the most unselfish, the nearest to a perfect 
character, among men. Pope declared that he had every 
virtue under heaven ; Atterbury that he was more angelic 
than human. He was, besides, an accomplished scholar, 
and the possessor of a style unique for its brilliancy and re- 
finement in philosophical literature ; it places him, indeed, 
among the most polished prose writers not only of his cen- 
tury but of his country. To these intellectual gifts and 



248 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

moral graces he added the recommendation of a beautiful 
person and winning manners. There is little wonder that 
he was a universal favorite, admired and beloved wherever 
he went or was known. He is still further attractive from 
the novelty of his philosophical theory that what we call the 
external world of matter is unreal, and from the romantic 
scheme of his life — to found a college in Bermuda for the 
Christianizing of the American Indians. 

George Berkeley was born near Thomastown, in Kilkenny 
County ; educated, like Congreve and Swift before him, at 
Kilkenny School, and sent to Trinity College, Dublin, in his 
fifteenth year. Seven years later he graduated M.A. and 
obtained a fellowship; and in 1*709 he published his New 
Theory of Vision, in which he first tried to prove the non- 
existence of matter. In the following year he brought out 
his Principles of Human Knowledge, and in 1713 his Dia- 
logues between Hylas and Philonous ; the object of these 
works was to undermine the growing scepticism, atheism, 
and irreligion of the age by demonstrating, from the unreal- 
ity of matter and the existence of recurrent ideas in the 
mind of man, the necessity of a divine omnipresent mind as 
the abode of those ideas. In 1713 he left Trinity College 
and came to London, where he was welcomed by Swift and 
Pope, Addison and Steele. At Steele's request he wrote a 
few articles for The Guardian. Through Swift's influence 
he was appointed chaplain (he had taken orders in 1709) 
and secretary to the English Ambassador in Italy (Lord 
Peterborough). He was several years in Italy ; and after 
his return to England he was presented to the Deanery of 
Derry, worth £1100 a year. 

He gave up his fellowship, and began to meditate a ro- 
mantic college scheme for the conversion of the American 
savages. He proposed to exchange his rich deanery for the 
principalship of the ideal college on a salary of £100 a year. 
It was in vain that Swift bantered him on the subject — he 
was resolved on trying the experiment ; and at last Swift 
made interest with ministers, and under Walpole's adminis- 
tration a vote for a public grant of £20,000 to endow the 



ADAM SMITH 249 

Bermuda College passed both Houses of Parliament. Berke- 
ley proposed to devote to the scheme his own income and 
the legacy which had been left him by Hester Vanhomrigh 
(Vanessa, who had never seen him). In 1728 he married a 
wife and set out — not for the Bermudas, but for Rhode 
Island, where he took a farm and settled, and waited for the 
realization of his great idea. Three years he waited, happy 
enough in hope, and in the composition, in a cave on the 
shore, of his seven dialogues entitled Alciphron, or the Mi- 
nute Philosopher — another attack upon the freethinkers. 
But Walpole probably never meant to keep faith about the 
£20,000 ; the scheme was wrecked, and Berkeley came 
home disappointed. 

He settled in London, though he was still Dean of Derry, 
and in 1732 published Alciphron. Two years later, being 
now in his fiftieth year, he was made, through the good 
offices of Queen Caroline, Bishop of Cloyne, in Ireland, and, 
proceeding to his diocese, settled, and remained there for 
the next eighteen years. In 1744 appeared his strange book 
Siris, in which, among other matters, he treats of the me- 
dicinal efficacy of tar-water, a beverage which he describes 
in the very words in which Cowper afterwards wrote of tea, 
as cheering but not inebriating. In 1752 he came with his 
family to live at Oxford, to be near his son, a student of 
Christ Church. He held the idea that a bishop should re- 
side within his see or surrender his office , but the king 
would not listen to his resignation, and said the bishop 
could live where he liked. Berkeley had several years pre- 
viously declined the bishopric of Clogher, which Lord Ches- 
terfield offered him, though Clogher was twice the value of 
Cloyne. Berkeley died only a few months after his arrival 
in Oxford. 

Adam Smith (1723-1790), celebrated as the founder of 
the science of political economy, was the posthumous son of 
a comptroller of customs at the Fifeshire port of Kirkcaldy. 
He was intended for the Scottish Church, and was educated 
at Glasgow University, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he 



250 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

developed a taste for science and literature. He was ap- 
pointed professor first of Logic, and afterwards — in succes- 
sion to Hutcheson — of Ethics, at Glasgow University, and 
in 1759 produced his Theory of Moral Sentiments — a theory 
which sought to base virtue on sympathy. For two years, 
1764-66, he went as tutor with the young Duke of Buccleuch 
on a tour through Europe, and, returning to his native town, 
gave himself up to study for the next ten years. At the end 
of that time he brought out his famous book, Ari Inquiry 
into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The 
sound and enlightened policy of Pitt, in many relations of 
his career as a statesman, was due to this book ; he was a 
student at Cambridge when it appeared (1776); that same 
year he read it, and was convinced of its soundness ; and he 
applied its principles in the art of government as soon as he 
became a minister. Smith finds that labor is the only source 
of wealth, that money does not necessarily mean wealth, and 
that freedom of labor in the individual and trade in the na- 
tion are the best means of promoting the public wealth. 
These were not original doctrines ; they had been expressed 
before, by Hume and others, but never with such elaborate 
proof and luminous illustration. Smith was rewarded by a 
commissionership of customs, and lived in easy circum- 
stances to the time of his death in 1790. His style is re- 
markable for clearness of arrangement, lucidity of statement, 
and aptness and abundance of illustration. 

Other famous or popular authors belonging to the class of relig- 
ious and philosophical writers of this period (1660-1789) include: 

Richard Baxter, a leading Nonconformist divine, whose cata- 
logued works number one hundred and sixty-eight — "enough to 
load a cart," as Judge Jeffreys told him — of which only two 
are now read. The Saints' Everlasting Rest, published in 1650, and 
A Call to the Unconverted. 

Ralph Cud worth, Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge, author of 
a vast folio volume of one thousand pages entitled The True In- 
tellectual System of the Universe, published in 1678 as the first part 
of a work intended to refute atheism ; in morals he maintained the 
freedom of the will and the eternal and immutable distinction be- 
tween right and wrong, claiming for reason the power of perceiv- 
ing the distinction. 



OTHER RELIGIOUS AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITERS 251 

The Hon. Robert Boyle, son of the Earl of Cork, a very distinguished 
experimental philosopher in the departments of chemistry and 
physics, the Bacon of his age, and one of the founders of the 
Royal Society (incorporated in 1662) ; he wrote a great deal on 
scientific and religious subjects, always in the case of the latter 
in defence of Christianity ; his style in Occasional Reflections on 
Several Subjects was cleverly burlesqued by Swift in his Medita- 
tions on a Broomstick. 

Isaac Barrow, reputed the best scholar of his time. Professor of 
Mathematics at Cambridge, and a distinguished theologian and 
preacher ; in the pulpit he was notorious for his slovenly dress and 
his interminable sermons. 

John Tillotson, Primate of England for the last three years of his 
life, a popular and fluent preacher, candid, kind-hearted, and of 
liberal views ; he left no property at his death except a collection 
of sermons in MS., for the copyright of which his widow received 
from a publisher two thousand five hundred guineas. 

Robert South, Rector of Islip in Oxfordshire, and the wittiest of 
English divines, a virulent controversialist, and a fierce believer 
in the divine right of kings ; his sermons are still readable, espe- 
cially for their incisive force of style. 

William Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, long immensely popular 
for his Practical Discourse on Death, famous for his controversy 
on the doctrine of the Trinity with South ; he was a bitter oppo- 
nent of the Nonconformists, towards whom Tillotson was chari- 
tably disposed. 

Sir Isaac Newton, the pupil of BaiTOw, and his successor in the 
chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, M.P. for his university, war- 
den of the Mint, and president of the Royal Society ; he was 
the greatest natural philosopher the world has known. Chief 
among his many brilliant discoveries may be mentioned his the- 
ory of gravitation and his theory of light ; by the former, in 
the language of Thomson, he "bound the suns and planets to 
their spheres," while by the latter he "untwisted all the shining 
robe of day." His scientific works are entitled Principia, pub- 
lished in 1687, and Optics, a Treatise on Light, in 1704 ; he also 
wrote, like Boyle and Barrow and other scientific men of the time, 
on theological subjects, choosing especially the prophecies and 
Book of Revelation for his speculations. He was remarkable for 
his modesty. 

Anthony Ashley Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury, grandson of the first 
Lord Shaftesbury (the crafty politician whom Dryden satirized as 
Achitopbel) ; he was the pupil of Locke, and author of an En- 
quiry Concerning Virtue (1699), and Characteristics of Men, Man- 
ners, Ojnnions, and Times (1711) : a man of pure character and 



252 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

refined tastes, he ranks as one of the most graceful and harmo- 
nious of the prose writers of last century ; in ethics he sought to 
establish the theory of a separate moral sense by which the dis- 
tinction of right from wrong is recognized. 

Isaac Watts, an Independent clergyman, who, while still under 
forty, withdrawing from active life through ill-health, found a 
home for thirty -six years in the country mansion of a friend ; in 
which snug retirement he wrote a variety of Psalms and Hymns, 
and Divine and Moral Songs for Children, besides an elementary 
Treatise on Logic. 

Samuel Clarke, one of the most eminent divines of his day, the 
friend of Newton, whom he defended against the attack of Leib- 
nitz, and whom he might have succeeded as master of the Mint ; he 
wrote on The Being and Attributes of God and on The Evidences of 
Natural and Revealed Religion, with much convincing force, but 
in a cold, mathematical style. 

Joseph Butler, Bishop of Bristol, and afterwards of Durham, 
and who might have been primate ; author of a volume of ser- 
mons and The Analogy of Religion^ Natural and Revealed, to the 
Constitution and Course of Nature ; of his Sermons the first three 
deal with the subject of morality, and assert the supremacy of 
conscience as representing the will of God in the economy of 
human nature ; the Analogy (published 1736) aims at proving the 
existence of Deity from the phenomena of the external world, 

Francis Hutcheson, an Irish school-master, who having made a 
reputation by his Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty 
and Virtue, on the lines laid down by Shaftesbury, was appoint- 
ed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, and became the 
teacher of Adam Smith ; his System of Moral Philosojihy, written 
lucidly and with taste, was published a few years after his death. 

Philip Doddridge, an eminent Nonconformist divine, author of 
The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul, and a very popular 
Life of Colonel Gardiner (who fell at Prestonpans in 1745) ; much 
praised by Johnson for his epigrammatic interpretation of the 
family motto ''Bum mvimus vi'vamus" — "Live while you live," 
etc. 

John Wesley, an amiable, scholarly, and devoted Christian apos- 
tle of the eighteenth century, the founder of the Methodists, who 
preached forty thousand sermons and travelled three hundred 
thousand miles to disseminate the doctrine of universal redemp- 
tion; born in 1703, he lived till he was eighty -eight, and contin- 
ued writing, journeying, and preaching to the last ; he was, in 
conjunction with his brothQr Charles, the author of at least two 
collections of Psalms and Hymns. 
• Thomas Reid, the father of Scottish or common -sense philosophy, 



TABLE OF AUTHORS FROM 1660 TO 1789 253 

Professor of Ethics in Glasgow, and author of An Inquiry into 
the Human Mind, On the Intellectual Powers, and On the Active 
Poicers ; in ethics he accepts the moral sense of Shaftesbury. 

David Hume (ah'cady noticed under the Historians), the logical 
successor of Locke and Berkeley, author of A Treatise on Human 
Nature, An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and An 
Inquiry Concerning the Principles of 3Iorals; he limited knowledge 
to the experience of the senses, and he regarded utility as the 
standard of morality. 

Joseph Priestley, an experimental philosopher, a Unitarian in 
theology, and the opponent of the doctrines of Free Will and 
Intuition. 

William Paley, Archdeacon of Carlisle, and holder of many other 
lucrative Church appointments, author of Horm PaulincE and Ev- 
idences of Christianity ; his style is cold and measured, not unlike 
that of Clarke. 

Chronological Table of Authors from 1660 to 1789 

(A) Surviving from Last Period 

1588-1667. George Wither, poet. 

1588-1679. Thomas Hobbes, philosopher. 

1591-1673. Robert Herrick, poet. 

1593-1683. Izaak Walton, essayist and biographer. 

1594-1666. James Shirley, dramatist. 

1605-1682. Sir Thomas Browne, philosopher. 

1608-1674. Edward Hyde (Lord Clarendon), historian. 

1608-1674. John Milton, poet. 

1613-1667. Jeremy Taylor, religious writer. 

(B) Belonging to the Period 

1605-1687. Edmund Waller, poet. 

1605-1668. Sir William Davenant, poet and dramatist. 

] 612-1680. Samuel Butler, satirical wit and verse writer. 

1613-1684. Robert Leighton (Archbishop), religious writer. 

1615-1691. Richard Baxter, religious writer. 

1615-1668. Sir John Denham, descriptive poet. 

1617-1688. Ralph Cudworth, philosopher. 

1618-1667. Abraham Cowley, poet and essayist. 

1620-1706. John Evelyn, historical diarist. 

1620-1678. Andrew Marvell, poet. 

1627-1688. George Villiers (Duke of Buckingham), dramatist. 

1627-1691. Hon. Robert Boyle, philosopher. 

1628-1688. John Bunyan, religious allegorical writer. 



254 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

1629-1699. Sir William Temple, essayist. 

1630-1677. Isaac Barrow, religious writer. 

1630-1694. John Tillotson (Archbishop), religious writer. 

1631-1700. John Dryden, poet, dramatist, and critic. 

1632-1704. John Locke, philosopher. 

1632-1703. Samuel Pepys, diarist. 

1633-1716. Robert South, religious writer. 

1633-1684. Wentworth Dillon (Lord Roscommon), poet. 

1635-1715. Thomas Burnet, philosopher. 

1636-1713. Thomas Sprat (Bishop), biographer. 

1636-1691. Sir George Mackenzie, essayist. 

1637-1705. Charles Sackville (Lord Dorset), poet. 

1638-1701. Sir Charles Sedley, dramatist. 

1640-1715. William Wycherley, dramatist. 

1640-1689. Mrs. Aphra Behn, dramatist. 

1641-1707. William Sherlock, religious writer. 

1642-1727. Sir Isaac Newton, philosopher. 

1643-1715. Gilbert Burnet (Bishop), historian. 

1643-1737. John Strype, historian. 

1648-1680. John Wilmot (Lord Rochester), poet. 

1651-1685. Thomas Otway, dramatist. 

1656-1691. Nat Lee, dramatist. 

1657-1734. John Dennis, critic, etc. 

1660-1746. Thomas Southerne, dramatist. 

1660-1731. Daniel Defoe, novelist. 

1661-1715. Charles Montague (Lord Halifax), poet. 

1662-1742. Richard Bentley, critic. 

1662-1731. Francis Atterbury (Bishop), religious writer. 

1663-1708. William Walsh, critic. 

1664-1721. Matthew Prior, poet. 

1667-1735. John Arbuthnot, essayist and narrative writer. 

1667-1745. Jonathan Swift, satirical narrative writer. 

1669-1729. William Congreve, dramatist. 

1670-1729. Sir Richard Steele, essayist and dramatist. 

1670-1718. Sir Samuel Garth, poet. 

1671-1713. Ashley Cooper (third Lord Shaftesbury), philosopheJ*. 

1671-1757. Colley Cibber, dramatist. 

1671-1749. Ambrose Philips, poet. 

1672-1719. Joseph Addison, essayist. 

1672-1726. Sir John Vanbrugh, dramatist. 

1673-1718. Nicholas Rowe, dramatist. 

1674-1748. Isaac Watts, religious writer. 

1675-1729. Samuel Clarke, philosopher and religious writer. 

1676-1708. John Philips, poet. 

1676-1740. Thomas Tickell, poet. 



f 



TABLE OF AUTHORS FROM 1660 TO 1789 255 

1676-1761. Benjamin Hoadly (Bishop), religious writer. 

1678-1751. Henry St. John (Lord Bolingbroke), essayist. 

1678-1707. George Farquhar, dramatist. 

1679-1718. Thomas Parnell, poet. 

1681-1765. Edward Young, poet. 

1684-1753. George Berkeley (Bishop), philosopher. 

1686-1758. Allan Ramsay, Scottish poet and dramatist. 

1688-1732. John Gay, poet. 

1688-1744. Alexander Pope, poet. 

1689-1761. Samuel Richardson, novelist. 

1692-1742. William Somerville, poet. 

1692-1753. Joseph Butler (Bishop), philosopher and religious 

writer. 
1694-1747. Francis Hutcheson, philosopher. 
1696-1782. Henry Home (Lord Karnes), essayist and critic. 
1696-1737. Matthew Green, poet. 
1697-1743. Richard Savage, poet. 

1698-1779. William Warburton (Bishop), religious writer. 
1698-1765. David Malloch, poet. 
1699-1746. Robert Blair, poet. 
1700-1758. John Dyer, poet. 
1700-1748. James Thomson, poet. 
1701-1751. Philip Doddridge, religious writer. 
1703-1791. John Wesley, religious writer. 
1706-1783. Henry Brooke, novelist. 
1707-1754. Henry Fielding, novelist. 
1708-1773. George, Lord Lyttelton, historian. 
1709-1779. John Armstroug, poet. 
1709-1784. Samuel Johnson, critic and essayist. 
1710-1796. Thomas Reid, philosopher. 
1711-1792. William Tytler, historian. 
1711-1776. David Hume, historian and philosopher. 
1712-1785. Richard Glover, poet. 
1713-1768. Laurence Sterne, novelist. 
1714-1763. William Shenstone, poet. 
1714-1799. James Burnet (Lord Monboddo), philosopher. 
1716-1771. Thomas Gray, poet. 

1717-1797. Horace Walpole (Lord Orford), novelist, etc. 
1718-1800. Hugh Blair, critic and religious writer. 
1720-1771. George Tobias Smollett, novelist. 
1721-1759. William Collins, poet. 
1721-1770. Mark Akenside, poet. 
1721-1777. Samuel Foote, dramatist. 
1722-1791. William Robertson, historian. 
1722-1808. John Home, dramatist. 



256 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

1723-1790. Adam Smith, philosopher. 

1723-1792. Sir Joshua Reynolds, critic of art. 

1728-1790. Thomas Warton, poet and historian. 

1728-1774, Oliver Goldsmith, essayist, poet, dramatist, etc, 

1730-1802. John Moore, novelist. 

1730-1797. Edmund Burke, essayist and philosopher. 

1730-1769. William Falconer, poet. 

1731-1764. Charles Churchill, poet. 

1731-1802. Erasmus Darwin, verse writer. 

1731-1800. William Cowper, poet. 

1733-1794, George Colman, the elder, dramatist. 

1733-1804. Joseph Priestley, philosopher and religious writer. 

1735-1803. James Beattie, poet. 

1736-1812. Home Tooke, essayist and critic. 

1737-1794. Edward Gibbon, historian. 

1738-1796. James Macpherson, poet. 

1740-1795. James Boswell, biographer. 

1743-1805. William Paley, philosopher. 

1744-1825. William Mitford, historian. 

1745-1831. Henry Mackenzie, essayist and novelist. 

1746-1767. Michael Bruce, poet. 

1751-1774. Robert Fergusson, Scottish poet. 

1752-1770. Thomas Cbatterton, poet. 

1752-1816. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, dramatist. 

1752-1840. Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay), novelist. 

1753-1821. Mrs. Elizabeth Inchbald, novelist and dramatist. 

1753-1831. William Roscoe, historian. 

1754-1832. George Crabbe, poet. 

1757-1827. William Blake, poet. 

1759-1796. Robert Burns, Scottish poet. 



Chronological List op Works published between 
1660 AND 1789 

1660. Dryden's Astrjea Redux. 

1662. Fuller's Worthies of England. 

1663. Butler's Hudibras (Part I.) ; Dryden's Wild Gallant. 

1667. Dryden's Annus Mirabilis ; Milton's Paradise Lost. 

1668. Cowley's Works (Poems and Essays). 

1671. Milton's Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes. 

1677. Wycherley's Plain Dealer (first acted in 1674). 

1678. Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (Part I.); Dryden's All for 

Love. 

1680. Otway's Orphan. 

1681. Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. 



LIST OF WORKS, 1660-1789 257 

1682. Bunyan's Holy War ; Dryden's Religio Laid ; Otway's Ven- 
ice Preserved. 

1685. Cotton's Translation of Montaigne's Essays. 

1687. Dryden's Hind and Panther ; Sir Isaac Newton's Principia ; 
Montague and Prior's Town Mouse and Country Mouse. . 

1690. Locke's Essay on Human Understanding. 

1692. Sir William Temple's Essays. 

1693. Congreve's Old Bachelor. 

1694. Congreve's Double Dealer. 

1695. Congreve's Love for Love. 

1697. Congreve's Mourning Bride ; Dryden's Alexander's Feast. 

1698. Collier's Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of 

the Stage ; Vanbrugh's Provoked Wife. 
1700. Congreve's Way of the World. 

1704. Addison's Campaign ; Clarendon's History of the Great Re- 

bellion (First Part), 33 years after his death ; Swift's Bat- 
tle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub ; Dennis's Grounds 
of Criticism in Poetry. 

1705. John Philips's Splendid Shilling. 

1706. Farquhar's Recruitmg Officer. 

1707. Farquhar's Beaux' Stratagem ; Prior's Poems. 

1709. Berkeley's New Theory of Vision ; Pope's Pastorals; " The 

Tatler " (1st No. on 12th April). 

1710. Parnell's Hermit. 

1711. Pope's Essay on Criticism ; "The Spectator " (1st No. on 1st 

March) ; Shaftesbury's Characteristics of Men, etc. 

1712. Pope's Rape of the Lock ; Arbuthnot's History of John Bull. 

1713. Addison's Cato ; Pope's Windsor Forest ; Row^e's Jane Shore. 
1715. Pope's Translations of the Iliad (vol. i.). 

1717. Gibber's Non- Juror ; Pope's Eloisa to Abelard, and Elegy on 
an Unfortunate Lady. 

1719. Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (Part I.) ; Tickell's Elegy on Addi- 
son ; Isaac Watts's Hymns ; Young's Revenge. 

1723. Pope's Odyssey (completed in 1725— Broome and Fenton as- 

sisting). 

1724. Burnet's History of My Own Times (vol. i.), 9 years after 

his death ; Swift's Drapier's Letters. 

1725. Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. 

1726. Butler's Sermons; Dyer's GrongarHill ; Thomson's Winter; 

Swift's Gulliver's Travels. 
1728. Pope's Dunciad (First Version) ; Gay's Beggars' Opera. 
1730. Thomson's Seasons. 

1732. Pope's Essay on INIan, and Moral Essays (begun). 

1733. Pope's Imitations of Horace (begun). 

1735. Pope's Prologue to the Satires ; Somerville's Chace. 

17 



258 THE FIFTH PERIOD, 1660-1789 

1737. Glover's Leonidas ; Green's Spleen ; Shenstone's School-mis- 
tress. 
1740. Richardson's Pamela. 

1742. Young's Night Thoughts (First Part); Fielding's Joseph 

Andrews. 

1743. Blair's Grave. 

1744. Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination. 
1746. Collins's Odes. 

1748, Hume's Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding; Rich- 

ardson's Clarissa Harlowe ; Smollett's Roderick Random ; 
Thomson's Castle of Indolence. 

1749. Fielding's Tom Jones. 

1751. Fielding's Amelia; Gray's Elegy; Smollett's Peregrine Pickle. 

1753. Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison. 

1754. Hume's History of England (vol. i.). 

1755. Johnson's Dictionary. 

1756. Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful ; Home's Trag- 

edy of Douglas. 

1757. Gray's Odes (The Bard, etc.) ; Dyer's Fleece. 

1759. Johnson's Rassel as; Robertson'sHistory of Scotland; Sterne's 

Tristram Shandy (First Part). 

1760. Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (begun, in "The Ledger"). 

1762. Macpherson's Ossian. 

1763. Lady Mary Montagu's Letters. 

1764. Churchill's Candidate ; Walpole's Castle of Otranto. 
1766. Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 

1768. Goldsmith's Good-natured Man ; Sterne's Sentimental Jour- 

ney. 

1769. The Letters of "Junius " (begun on 21st Jan. in " The Pub- 

lic Advertiser "). 

1770. Goldsmith's Deserted Village. 

1771. Beattie's Minstrel (First Book) ; Mackenzie's Man of Feeling; 

Smollett's Humphrey Clinker. 

1773. Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer. 

1774. Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry (completed in 

1778). 

1775. Sheridan's The Rivals. 

1776. Gibbon's Decline and Fall; Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. 

1777. Sheridan's School for Scandal. 

1778. Fanny Burney's Evelina. 

1779. Johnson's Lives of the Poets ; Cowper and Newton's Olney 

Hymns. 

1781. Crabbe's Library. 

1782. Cowper's Table Talk, etc. 

1783. Blair's Rhetoric ; Crabbe's Village. 



LIST OF WORKS, 1660-1789 259 



1784. Mitford's History of Greece (vol. i.). 

1785. Cowper's Task. 

1786. Burns's Poems. 

1788. "The Times " (1st No. on 1st Jan.). 

1789. Blake's Songs of Innocence. 



1789-1894 

FROM THE FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE PRESENT TIME 

The range is over more than a century, and extends from 
the middle of the reign of George III. to the fifty-eighth year 
of the reign of Victoria. The succession of sovereigns in 
the period is as follows : George III., George IV., William 
IV., and Victoria. The chief events in British history, af- 
fecting more or less directly the literary growth of the period, 
are here presented as they occurred in the successive reigns : 

Reign of George III., [1760-] 1789-1820.— Trial of Warren Has- 
tings, lasting seven years, from 1788. War with France, more or 
less continuously from 1793 to 1815 : Naval victories— battle of 
"The Fil-st of June," Cape St. Vincent, Camperdown, The Nile, 
The Baltic, Trafalgar (with death of Nelson) ; land victories— (in 
India) over Tippoo Sahib and his French auxiliaries ; (in Ireland) 
over the " United Irishmen " and their French auxiliaries ; (in the 
Peninsula, at Corunna, Talavera, Albuera, Salamanca, etc.) over 
the French; and final overthrow of Napoleon at Waterloo by 
Wellington, Union of Great Britain and Ireland, in 1800. Riots 
in England after the peace— the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. , 

Note. — At the time of the French Revolution England was pros- 
perous, and by the use of inventions of machinery had be- 
come a great manufacturing country. During the war, in 
spite of heavy taxation to maintain it, trade and commerce 
flourished ; after the war came commercial panics, and mis- 
ery to the poor: corn was dear, work scarce, and there was 
great political discontent in the country. 

Reign of George IV., 1820-1830.— The Cato Street Conspiracy. 
The Bill of Pains and Penalties ; death of Queen Caroline. Com- 
mercial speculations and panic (involving the ruin of Sir Walter 
Scott). British fleet sent to the aid of Greece— battle of Navarino 
(1825). Catholic Relief Bill, passed in 1829. 

^ote. — In this reign the Criminal Laws were amended, and the 
first steps to Free Trade were taken. 



INTRODUCTION 261 

Reign of William IV., 1830-1837.— Reform Act, 1832. Abolition 
of slavery in the British colonies, 1834. Other reforms — relative 
to the relief of the poor, the employment of children, etc. 

Note. — In this reign money grants in aid of elementary educa- 
tion were first given ; and the first railway (between Liver- 
pool and Manchester) was opened. 

Reign of Victoria, 1837-1894.— Eebellion in Lower Canada. The 
Chartist Movement. Famine in Ireland; Free Trade in corn, 1849. 
The Great Exhibition of 1851. Death of Wellington, 1852. The 
Crimean War, 1854-1856 — battles of the Alma, Balaclava, and Ink- 
erman, siege of Sebastopol. Mutiny in India, 1857. "Cotton" 
Famine in Lancashire — an effect of the American Civil War of 
1861-1865. Fenian outrages; disestablishment of the Irish Church, 
1869. Renewal of the Eastern Question ; the Berlin Congress, 1878. 
War with Zulus ; followed by war with Boers in South Africa. 
Bombardment of Alexandria, and battle of Tel - el - Kebir, 1882; 
death of Gordon, at Khartoum, 1885. The Home Rule Question 
of 1886 ; split of the Liberal party. The Queen's Jubilee. Free 
elementary education. 



INTRODUCTION 

In the history of English literature the nineteenth 
century takes high rank — indeed, all but the highest. 
It comes next in the value and importance of its literary 
productions to the century which lies between the youth 
of Shakespeare and the ripe age of Milton. " The litera- 
ture of England," wrote Shelley, himself a prime factor ni 
the age he described, " has arisen, as it were, from a new 
birth. . . . We live among such philosophers and poets as 
surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since 
the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty." 
The age is memorable, not only for the quality, but also 
for the quantity and variety, of its literary work. There 
has been great activity in all departments of prose and 
verse composition, the drama for various reasons being 
the only exception. This activity has more especially 
manifested itself in poetry, fiction, history (including 



262 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

biography), and criticism. And a new and vigorous 
department has been created for science and scientific 
travel. The amount of literary matter produced is be- 
yond belief. Thousands of books are issued every year, 
and there has been enormous increase in the number of 
periodicals. The reading public now means the whole 
nation. Much of our best literature finds its way into the 
quarterly and monthly magazines, and the weekly, and 
even the daily, newspaper devotes a large part of its space 
to literary essays and criticism. Even our best authors 
are more or less connected with the periodical press. It 
is no exaggeration to say that literature and journalism 
have joined hands — a union which dates from the estab- 
lishment of The Edbiburgh Review in 1802. They were 
only occasional companions before that. 

The century, and especially the earlier part of it, is 
strong in poetry. Among its great poetical names are 
those of Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Campbell, By- 
ron, Shelley, Keats, Mrs. Browning, Tennyson, Robert 
Browning, Matthew Arnold, William Morris, and Swin- 
burne ; to which might be added Hogg, as representing 
purely Scottish poetry, Moore, as representing the poeti- 
cal genius of Ireland, and such notable American poet- 
names as Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, and Whitman. 
Fiction, which of all literary forms is now most largely 
cultivated, and which has special and peculiar attractions 
for female writers, is well represented by such names as 
Scott, Disraeli, Lytton, Thackeray, Dickens, Reade, Char- 
lotte Bronte, " George Eliot," Meredith, Hardy, and 
Stevenson ; to which might be added, as representative 
of America, Cooper, Hawthorne, Mrs. Stowe, Howells, 
and Crawford. In the department of history and biog- 
raphy, the great names are M'Crie, Southey, Hallam, 
Alison, Lockhart, Grote, Carlyle, Macaulay, Hill, Burton, 



INTRODUCTION 263 

Kinglake, Forster, Helps, Lewis, Froude, Buckle, Mas- 
son, Freeman, Gardiner, Green, Lecky, and John Morley; 
to which, as representing America, might be added Pres- 
cott and Motley. The greatest names in criticism and 
the essay are Gifford, Coleridge, Jeffrey, Lamb, Hazlitt, 
Wilson, De Quincey, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Matthew Ar- 
nold. Science and philosophy are represented by Brew- 
ster, Herschel, Lyell, Stuart Mill, Darwin, Herbert Spen- 
cer, Tyndall, Russel Wallace, and Huxley. 

The extraordinary literary activity of the nineteenth 
century is due to a variety of causes, among which it is 
impossible to overlook the vast improvements that have 
been made in the art of printing, and the perfect free- 
dom wisely allowed to the press. Other obvious causes 
will be found in the great increase that has been made in 
the wealth and welfare of the nation — in its material 
prosperity, and its moral and social advancement. But 
the main cause was the event, or rather series of events, 
known as the French Revolution. This was a movement 
on the part of the oppressed French nation, which had 
for its object the final overthrow of tyranny and the as- 
sertion of the natural and equal rights of man. It came 
to be identified with the hope and aspiration of humani- 
ty for brotherhood and peace among the nations. France 
was believed to be leading the van in the great millen- 
nial movement for universal brotherhood. She had the 
sympathy of generous hearts and sincere and thoughtful 
minds everywhere^ Her success, when in 1V89 she de- 
molished the Bastille, and in 1790 proclaimed her new 
Constitution, was welcomed with acclamations which it 
is probably impossible for us, at the distance of a century,, 
quite to realize. " Bliss was it," exclaimed Wordsworth,. 
" in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very 
heaven !" How far short France came of leading in a 



264 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

golden age is a matter of history. Some, like Words- 
worth, Coleridge, and Southey, whom she disappointed 
and horrified, despairing of popular government, sought 
refuge in traditional authority and conservatism. Oth- 
ers, like Shelley, refusing to recognize in the failure 
of France the failure of the grand idea of a Universal 
Brotherhood, clung to the idea, and cherished it, and 
flashed it alluringly in the eyes of England ; or, like 
Byron, attacked the foundations of old authority, with- 
out in the meantime troubling themselves much about 
what the new regime should be. 

But the great thing to notice in this matter of the 
French Revolution as an influence upon our literature is 
the flooding of new emotions and new ideas which it 
poured into society. From those emotions and those 
ideas sprang much that is best in the poetry of the nine- 
teenth century. From them our poets derived their pas- 
sion, their energy, their earnestness ; these are every- 
thing in art, which without them is only artifice. The 
Napoleonic wars, by stirring the feelings, and inspiring 
the mind with a succession of fresh ideas, are to be re- 
garded as a continuation of that influence upon English 
literature which the Revolution began. Other influences 
were at work : collections of the old ballads, such as 
Percy's Beliques, inspired the whole genius of Scott, and 
the new German literature, creeping at first in the form 
of wild romantic ballads into the country, and command- 
ing attention later in the nobler creations of Goethe and 
Schiller, powerfully affected for both good and evil the 
speculations of Coleridge, and the method, material of 
thought, and even the manner of Carlyle. Political agi- 
tation at home, around the Corn Laws, the Reform Bill, 
etc., had its due effect, directly and indirectly, upon both 
poetry and fiction. 



INTRODUCTION 265 

The subject of nineteenth -century poetry has been 
pretty equally divided between Nature and Man. The 
return of poetry to nature, begun by Thomson and 
quickened by Cowper and Burns in the preceding cen- 
tury, was consummated by Wordsworth ; and the study 
of nature received such an impetus as still continues, and 
it is not likely soon to die out. Among the most forci- 
ble describers of natural scenery, after Wordsworth, are 
Scott and Byron ; and much of the poetry of Tennyson 
reflects the features of English landscape. Nature has 
been truly and freshly presented, but the interpretation 
of her aspects has varied. Wordsworth, and to some 
extent Shelley, give a spiritual interpretation ; to Scott 
she is arrayed in the hues of romance ; Byron finds in 
her storms and calms a reflection of his own chanirinp: 
moods ; her sensuous beauty appeals to Keats; Tennyson 
is content to stand aloof and photograph with artistic 
clearness her more graceful or interesting attitudes. Nar- 
rative poetry full of adventure and incident, and often 
powerful characterization, has been largely cultivated by 
all the leading poets of the century, from Scott's Lay of 
the Last Minstrel and Byron's Eastern Tales to Tenny- 
son's Idyls of the King and Morris's Earthly Paradise. 
Lyrical poetry, especially the ballad form of it, is a nota- 
ble feature of nineteenth - century verse, and it is well 
exemplified in Scott's Eve of St. John at the commence- 
ment of the period, and Tennyson's The Hevejige, or 
Kipling's Ballad of East and IVest, at the close. Latter- 
ly, our poets have gone back to classical and mediaeval 
times for narrative subjects. But there has been no 
neglect of themes of practical and speculative interest. 
Like the novel, poetry, perhaps unhappily, has invaded 
the fields of science and philosophy. 

The style of poetry has been remarkably modified in 



266 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

the course of the century. At the beginning it was char- 
acterized by an unconventional freedom both of form 
and expression, iUustrated in the verse of Wordsworth, 
Scott, Byron, and Shelley ; towards the close it has be- 
come more condensed and correct, more polished and 
artistic. The change began with Keats, whose Eve of 
St. Agnes inaugurated the Literary or Artistic School 
of poetry. With the minutely faithful observation of 
Wordsworth and the Lake School, Tennyson combines, 
but with developments of his own, the artistic style of 
Keats. While the style has thus undergone a change, it 
has always — except in the solitary instance of Browning 
— carried music and melody. Browning is picturesque, 
but his verse refuses to sing — it is a jumble of jars and 
discords. Swinburne, on the other hand, is nothing if 
he is not melodious. 

The nineteenth century is remarkable for its fertility 
in fiction. When the century began the Novel was mo- 
nopolized by the Minerva Press — an utterly depraved 
school of silly or stupid sentimentalists. Maria Edge- 
worth and Jane Austen set about the destruction of this 
school, and when Scott entered the lists with his mag- 
nificent romances it shrank and disappeared. Dickens 
and Thackeray inaugurated the novel of modern life, 
and "George Eliot" ably continued it. The domestic 
novel, which is now in vogue, is not nearly exhausted ; 
Mrs. Olij^hant is perhaps its most popular exponent. 
The novel of adventure has been revived by Hag- 
gard, and is at present in the hands of Louis Steven- 
son. A new species of novel, dealing with the pas- 
sions and i^rejudices, the haunts and habits, of obscure 
villagers and rustics — the local novel, as it might be 
called — is finding much acceptance with a large num- 
ber of the reading public. Tess of the D'' Urhervilles, by 



INTRODUCTION 267 

Thomas Hardy, and The Little Minister^ by J. M. Barrie, 
are the most popular of this class. Gait or George 
Macdonald should be regarded as the originator of the 
local novel. The religious novel, such as Robert Els- 
mere, by Mrs. Humphry Ward, is a remarkable feature 
of current fiction, and probably owes its origin to the 
scepticism of the age. Kipling has recently aroused 
a wide and keen interest in India and the British sol- 
dier by his audaciously realistic Anglo-Indian tales and 
sketches. 

Literary dramatic writing for the stage seems to be a 
lost art in England. The greatest geniuses of the period 
have attempted to restore the drama, but with absolute 
or comparative failure. Scott's plays will neither read 
nor act. Byron's at the best are magnificent poems. 
Shelley's The Cenci is one of the most powerful trage- 
dies of modern times, but the subject debars it from 
the stage. Browning, whose genius was essentially dra- 
matic, wrote several dramas — Strafford, King Victor 
and King Charles, and ^ Blot on the ^Scutcheon — but 
none of them has been quite successful. The same is to 
be said of Tennyson's Queen Mary, Harold, The Falcon, 
The Cup, and Bechet ; they contain excellent poetical 
passages, but are unsuited for the popular taste. Swin- 
burne's Chastelard is a poem rather than a play, and 
neither Bothwell nor Mary Stuart has secured a footing. 
The least unsuccessful writers for the theatre have been 
Sheridan Knowles, Talfourd (author of Ion), Sir Henry 
Taylor (author of Philip van Artevelde), Bulwer Lytton, 
whose Lady of Lyons has still a fair measure of popu- 
larity, Wills (author of Charles the First), and Tom Tay- 
lor, who wrote or translated about one hundred dramatic 
pieces, of which Still Waters Bun Beep and ' Twixt Axe 
and Crown are among the best. The plays of Jerrold, 



268 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Planche, Robertson, Pinero, and Gilbert can hardly be 
called literature. 

The prose of the period has made new and notable de- 
velopments, especially exemplified in criticism and the 
essay. Lamb has well sustained the best traditions of 
the English essay, to which he has added graces all his 
own. De Quincey is one of the greatest masters of har- 
monious English prose. The same praise is merited by 
Ruskin and Swinburne, both producing marvellous ef- 
fects — the former with a singular simplicity of diction, 
the latter with something of the abundant pomp of Mil- 
ton blended with the musical sweetness of Jeremy Tay- 
lor. In history remarkable powers of pictorial descrip- 
tion have been displayed by Macaulay, and in scarcely 
less degree by Froude, Kinglake, and Green. They have 
made fact as fascinating as fiction. Brilliancy of style 
in this department has gone hand in hand with elaborate 
research and painstaking accuracy. Hallam, Carlyle, 
Masson, Stubbs, Freeman, and Gardiner have more espe- 
cially subjected the selected periods of their study to the 
most searching investigation. But the same spirit of in- 
quiry and analysis has entered into the entire literary 
work of the age. It is one of the most striking charac- 
teristics of the period. In science, where such a spirit is 
essential, it has not been unaccompanied by high quali- 
ties of style. The pens of Tyndall and Huxley have pro- 
duced a literature of science scarcely less attractive than 
the literature of imagination. 

CLASSIFICATION OF THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 

I. Poets. — Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, 
Keats, Tennyson, and Browning. 

Other Poets. — Rogers, Hogg, Southey, Landor, Camp- 
bell, Moore, Hood, Mrs. Browning, Aytoun, Mat- 
thew Arnold, William Morris, and Swinburne. 
Also Longfellow, Whittier, Whitman, etc. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 269 

II. Writers of Fiction. — Scott, Thackeray, and Dickens. 

Other JS'oveUsts—BisnAK-Li, Lytton, Reade, Charlotte 
Bronte, Kingsley, "George Eliot," etc. 

III. Critics and Essayists. — De Quincey, Carlyle, and Ruskin. 

Others — Jeffrey, La^ib, Hazlitt, Wilson, etc. 

IV. Biographers and Historians. — Macaulay. Also Hall am, 

Grote, Froude, Buckle, Freeman, Kinglake, Green, 
etc. 
V. Philosophers, e^c— Stuart Mill, Darwin, Spencer, Tyn- 
dall, Huxley, etc. 

POETS 

Poets Laureate of the Period, 1789-1894 

Thomas Warton .... Laureate from 1788 to 1790 

Henry James Pye . ... " " 1790 to 1813 

Robert Southey .... " " 1813 to 1843 

William Wordsworlh . . " " 1843 to 1850 

Alfred, Lord Tennyson . . " " 1850 to 1893 

One of the most original and influential of the poets of 
the nineteenth century was William Wordsworth (IVVO- 
1850), at once the interpreter of nature and of human life. 
He was the second of a family of five children — four sons 
and a daughter — born to John AVords worth and his wife 
Anne Cookson. John Wordsworth was an attorney, and 
agent for the Lonsdale estates, at Cockermouth, in Cumber- 
land, and it was there the poet was born ; and there and at 
Penrith he spent his infancy and early boyhood. His moth- 
er died when he was eight years of age, he being then, as he 
describes himself, a boy " of a stiff, moody, and violent tem- 
per " ; and he was sent to the free grammar-school at Hawks- 
head, in the vale of Esthwaite, North Lancashire. He had 
a happy school-time, chiefly because he was left at liberty 
to read and roam about very much as he liked. His poem 
The Prelude minutely describes his mode of life and meth- 
od of study, his boating, riding, and skating excursions, his 
country rambles alone or in company with his school-fellows, 
his communion with nature, and the growth within him of 
"the spirit of religious love in which he walked with nat- 



270 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

ure." Like his Wanderer in The Excursion, a poem which 
also is colored with his own youthful reminiscences, he ear- 
ly felt the power and rejoiced in the presence of nature. 
Dread mingled with his joy. 

"I would stand, 
If the night blackened with a coming storm, 
Beneath some rocks, listening to notes tliat are 
The ghostly language of the ancient earth, 
Or make their dim abode in distant winds,'' 



It was Hawkshead that made Wordsworth a poet ; all his 
after-work was essentially the outcome of his youthful ex- 
periences there. Before his seventeenth year he was feel- 
ing a personal love for nature, and his faith in the pre- 
existing harmony between nature and man was established. 
It was at Hawkshead that he first began to write verses. 
Happy in his life and its surroundings, he was no less fort- 
unate in one of his teachers, William Taylor, whose character 
and influence are commemorated in Matthew, The Two Ajoril 
Mornings, and The Fountain. 

His father had died, leaving the family affairs in a some- 
what embarrassed state, when Wordsworth was a boy of 
fourteen. His relatives, however, sent him to St. John's 
College, Cambridge, in 1787 ; and there he remained — study- 
ing indeed, but mostly according to a scheme of his own — 
till his graduation four years later. The French Revolution 
was in progress during and after his undergraduateship ; 
and so enthusiastic was his interest in the patriot side that 
he went to live in France, and, identifying himself with the 
Girondists, whose aim was a republic, narrowly escaped the 
guillotine, the fate of many of his friends. Before many 
years his political faith underwent a complete change, and 
he who had been a fervid Republican developed into a strong 
Conservative. He returned to England in 1792, after an 
absence of about sixteen months, and in 1793 published sep- 
arately An Evening Walk and Desc7'iptive Sketches, his first 
poems, both in rhymed pentameter — the latter an account 
of a walking-tour in Switzerland in the long vacation of 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 271 

1790. Neither attracted any attention; but Wordsworth's 
serene self - appreciation sustained him through this and 
many a subsequent neglect. 

After much hesitation as to his future course in life, 
Wordsworth at last gave up the idea of entering the 
Church, or qualifying for the legal profession, or becoming 
a journalist ; a legacy of £900 left him by a young friend, 
Raisley Calvert, finally determined him to a life of indepen- 
dency and poetry. He at once settled, with his devoted 
sister Dorothy, first at Racedown, in Dorsetshire, in 1795; 
then at Alfoxden, in Somersetshire (to be near Coleridge), 
in 1797. In 1798 he left the south of England, and after a 
memorable visit to the Wye valley and a winter spent in 
Germany, returned to England in the spring, and was settled 
for good, with his sister, in his native Lake District as the 
year 1799 was drawing to a close. Before leaving Alfox- 
den, however, it is noteworthy that he had published, at 
Bristol (in 1798), the now famous Lyrical Ballads^ which, 
though containing the Lines Written at Tintern Abbey, with 
many other characteristic pieces, and Coleridge's great con- 
tribution. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, drew little or no 
attention for several years. 

AVordsworth's home, for the last fifty years of his life, 
was among the English lakes, first at Dove Cottage and af- 
terwards at Allan Bank, at Grasmere, and then, from 1813 
onward, at Rydal Mount, the locality chiefiy associated with 
his name. In 1800 he published an enlarged edition, in 
two volumes, of the Lyrical Ballads, to which he prefixed 
what Coleridge called a " valuable preface," containing the 
germ of his poetical theory. The year 1802 is memorable 
in the annals of his life for at least three important events — 
the payment of a debt to the Wordsworth family of about 
£8000 by the young Earl of Lonsdale, the poet's marriage 
to Mary Hutchinson, and the commencement of his great 
poem The Excursion. In 1813 his independency was still 
further secured by his appointment to the distributership of 
stamps for Westmoreland, an office which was virtually a 
sinecure, worth £500 a year. In the following year The Ex- 



272 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

cursion was published, and The White Doe of Rylstone, or 
The Fate of the JVortons, an historical poem, came out the 
year after. The honors which came to him in his later 
years included an honorary degree from Oxford in 1839, 
a government pension of £300 in 1842, and the laureate- 
ship, in succession to Southey, in 1843. Wordsworth's life 
at Grasmere and Rydal, though mainly one of quiet and 
regular poetical activity, was varied by visits to France, 
Germany, Wales, Ireland, and Italy ; and by five tours in 
Scotland, of which the first was made in 1803 and the last 
in 1838. His residence in the Lake District brought around 
him many poetical friends and admirers, of whom Coleridge 
and Southey were the chief, and to them began to be ap- 
plied the somewhat vague and misleading title of Lakists, 
or poets of the Lake School. The one great sorrow of 
Wordsworth's old age was the death (1847) of his daughter 
Dora, to whom he was much attached. He himself died a 
few days after completing his eightieth year, in April, 1850, 
and was buried in Grasmere church-yard. He left behind 
him in manuscript two important poems in blank-verse — the 
one, The Pi-elude, published in 1850 ; the other, to which the 
title of The Recluse has been given, so late as 1888. 

In addition to the larger poems of Wordsworth already 
mentioned, he wrote numerous sonnets, many of passing 
or only limited interest, but some of great and permanent 
power and beauty ; several pieces illustrative of his Scottish 
tours, more especially The Solitary Reaper^ Roh Roy^s Grave, 
and the Yarrow poems ; lyrical fragments and finished 
pieces of delicate beauty, such as the verses on Lucy, and 
The Cuckoo; many didactic and descriptive poems, pos- 
sessed of what has happily been called a " healing power," 
of which Resolution and Independence (or The Leech-Gath- 
erer) and the Ode to Duty are notable examples ; simple 
narratives in verse on subjects connected with children and 
childhood, like Lucy Gray and We are Seveyi ; a noble 
ode on Intimations of Immortality ; the classical poem — 
unique among his poetry — of Laodamia ; and poems On 
the Naming of Places in the Lake District. Wordsworth is 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 273 

eminently a meditative or philosophical poet, and his poetry 
is mainly the expression of " emotion recollected in tran- 
quillity." Two innovations he introduced and sought to 
practise — not always with the best results : he held that the 
humblest subjects were suitable for poetry (hence his Peter 
Bells and Alice Fells and Idiot Boys) ; and he discarded the 
conventional poetic diction which had grown up in the 
eighteenth century, and held that the language of poetry 
should be that " really used by men." 

His great merit lies in completing the return of poetry to 
nature, which had been begun by Thomson, and continued by 
Cowper and Burns ; his favorite theme was the influence of 
nature on man, of which he had a new and peculiar interpre- 
tation to give. Nature to him was a living thing, the ex- 
pression of a universal spirit, which communicated its own 
thoughts in direct impulses to man through the medium 
of hills and valleys, starry skies and flowing streams, vernal 
woods, and even the meanest flowers ; on those thoughts and 
impulses he reverently brooded till he was in harmony with 
the great benevolent spirit, and found peace and happiness; 
and hence the deep, strong, and abiding love with which 
he studied Nature and sought truthfully to reproduce her 
aspects. " It is the feeling," he used to say, " that instructs 
the seeing ; wherever there is a heart to feel there is an eye 
to see." 

The chief characteristics of Wordsworth's poetry have 
been specified by Coleridge : (1) An austere purity of lan- 
guage ; (2) a weight, sanity, and freshness of thought ; 
(3) a curiosa felicitas of diction ; (4) an utter truthfulness 
of natural description ; (5) a meditative pathos ; and (6) a 
graceful fancy, and an imaginative power that brings him 
nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton. 
His masterpiece is The Excursion. It is a didactic poem in 
nine books, dealing with the problem of humanity. Words- 
worth's hope of the elevation of man was not founded upon 
revolutions or legislation, but upon individual lives. " What 
one becomes why may not thousands be ?" was his question. 
The Excursion is a slender narrative of the adventures of 

18 



274 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

two friends, tlie Recluse (the poet himself) and the Wan- 
derer, among the scenes and inhabitants of the Lake Dis- 
trict, with ample discussions on nature and human nature 
by them and other two typical characters, the Solitary and 
the Parson. It was intended as part of a larger poem, to 
be called The Recluse, fragments of which remained in MS. 
when the poet died. Jeffrey was believed to have crushed 
The Excursion in The Edinburgh Review. " He crush The 
Excursion /" exclaimed Southey ; " he might as well think 
to crush Skiddaw !" 

" The hazels rose 
Tall and erect, with milk-white clusters hung, 
A virgin scene! — . . . Then up I rose 
And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash 
And merciless ravage ; and the shady nook 
Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, 
Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up 
Their quiet being : and, unless I now 
Confound my present feelings with the past. 
Even then, when from the bower I turned away 
Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, 
I felt a sense of pain when I beheld 
The silent trees and the intruding sky. — 
Then, dearest maiden! move along these shades 
In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
Touch — for there is a spirit in the woods." 

— Nutting. 

" The world is too much with us; late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers : 
Little we see in Nature that is ours ; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 
This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be 
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn ; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea ; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn." 

— Miscellaneous Sonnets. 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 275 

' She dwelt among the untrodden ways 

Beside the springs of Dove, 
A maid whom there were none to praise, 

And very few to love. 
A violet by a mossy stone 

Half-hidden from the eye ! 
— Fair as a star, when only one 

Is shining in the sky. 
She lived unknown, and few could know 

When Lucy ceased to be ; 
But she is in her grave, and, oh. 

The difference to me !" 

— Poems Founded on the Affections. 



" He spake of love, such love as spirits feel 

In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; 
No fears to beat away — no strife to heal — 

The past unsighed for, and the future sure ; 
Spake, as a witness, of a second birth 
For all that is most perfect upon earth : 

"Of all that is most beauteous— imaged there 
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams, 
An ampler ether, a diviner air, 

And fields invested with purpureal gleams ; 
Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day 
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey." 

—Laodamia. 



" Stern lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
Nor know we anything so fair 

As is the smile upon thy face : 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ; 
And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ; 
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and 
strong." —Ode to Duty. 

"It is the first mild day of March ; 
Each minute sweeter than before. 
The redbreast sings from the tall larch 
That stands beside our door. 



276 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

"There is a blessing in the air, 

Which seems a sense of joy to yield 
To the bare trees, and mountains bare, 
And grass in the green field. . . . 

"One moment now may give us more 
Than fifty years of reason : 
Our minds shall drink at every pore 
The spirit of the season, 

"Some silent laws our hearts may make, 
Which they shall long obey : 
We for the year to come may take 
Our temper from to-day." 

— Poems of Sentiment and Befleciion, 



I love the brooks, which down their channels fret, 
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 
The innocent brightness of a new-born day 

Is lovely yet ; 
The clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 
Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live ; 
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears ; 
To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

— Ode : Intimations of Immortality. 

"Will no one tell me what she sings? 
Perhaps her plaintive numbers flow 
For old unhappy far-off things 
And battles long ago !" 

— Solitary Reaper. 

"Thou, that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination. 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation : 
Meek loveliness is round thee spread, 

A softness still and holy ; 
The grace of forest charms decayed. 

And pastoral melancholy. 



WALTER SCOTT 277 

"That region left, the vale unfolds 

Rich groves of lofty stature, 
With Yarrow winding through the pomp 

Of cultivated nature ; 
And, rising from those lofty groves, 

Behold a ruin hoary ! 
The shattered front of Newark's Towers, 

Renowned in Border story, 

''Fair scenes for childhood's opening bloom, 

For sportive youth to stray in ; 
For manhood to enjoy his strength, 

And age to wear away in ! . . . 
I see — but not by sight alone, 

Loved Yarrow, have I won thee ; 
A ray of fancy still survives — 

Her sunshine plays upon thee ! . . . 
And well I know, where'er I go. 

Thy genuine image, Yarrow ! 
Will dwell with me — to heighten joy, 

And cheer my mind in sorrow." 

— Yarrow Visited. 

The greatest Scottish name in literature is that of Wal- 
ter Scott (1771-1832) ; and it is one of the greatest in 
European history of the nineteenth century. Scott is to 
Scotland what Shakespeare is to England, Goethe to Ger- 
many. It is not in respect of general excellence alone that 
he is worthy of comparison with Shakespeare. There are 
other points of resemblance. As a man, he had the same 
large-hearted humanity, the same healthy enjoyment of life, 
the same perfect sanity of genius. To both Scott and 
Shakespeare life was more than literature. As writers, both 
were possessed of a strong and vivid historical imagination, 
and a power of swift and sustained production astonishing 
beyond all record. Scott's imagination, like Shakespeare's, 
lived and delighted in the past. To both the past was a land 
of inexhaustible romance. Scott roamed from century to 
century with the familiar knowledge and ease with which 
one passes from street to street of his native town. " All is 
great," said Goethe, "in the Waverley novels — material, ef- 
fect, characters, execution." If Shakespeare turned out his 



278 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 178&-1894 

three dramatic masterpieces per year, Scott was not less 
equal to the annual task of three masterpieces in fiction. 
His pen ran free and unrestrained ; like Shakespeare, he 
" never blotted a line." Guy Mannering was the work of 
only six weeks ; the last two volumes of Waverley were writ- 
ten in the evenings of three summer weeks; The Bride of 
Lammermoor was finished in two. Where he differs from 
Shakespeare is in the want of speculative power. But his 
characters are as life-like, his scenes and incidents as dramat- 
ic, as those of Shakespeare ; it is only in his dramas that 
Scott's dramatic faculty fails and forsakes him. 

Scott belonged to the Harden branch of the great Border 
family which acknowledges the bold Buccleuch as its head. 
He was descended from Mary Scott, "the Plower of Yar- 
row," and he was also descended from " muckle-mou'd Meg " 
of Elibank. He was come of a male ancestry of raiders and 
rievers, and the instinct for battle and enterprise ran in his 
blood. He lived, however, in the weak piping times of 
peace, and was a member of a profession whose function it 
is to maintain law and order ; and the outlet of action being 
denied to his genius, he sought and found an outlet for it in 
art. The hereditary bent shows itself in his battle-pieces ; 
here he is Homeric. He stands pre-eminent, the poet of ac- 
tion. 

Scott's father, also named Walter, was a douce, canny 
Scottish attorney (he figures in Redgauntlet as the elder 
Fairford), of the class known in the North Country as 
" Writers to the Signet " ; his mother, Anne Rutherfurd, was 
the daughter of a medical professor of Edinburgh Universi- 
ty ; and it was in the Old Town of Edinburgh (" mine own 
romantic town") that Scott was born, on the 15th of Au- 
gust. He was one of a family of twelve children, of whom 
only two survived their mother. Six died young, before 
Scott was born. Scott himself, though he lived to be one of 
the strongest men of his time, was a weakly child, and sub- 
ject to fits of illness in his boyhood. In extreme youth, 
through a fever, he lost for some time the power of his right 
leg, and was, like Byron, always lame — though in manhood 



■ WALTER SCOTT 279 

his lameness never interfered with his freedom ; he could 
walk thirty or forty miles a day. It was the custom of his 
parents, when he was ailing, to send him to Tweedside to 
recover ; and there, at Sandyknowe, his grandfather's farm, 
or at Kelso, in the house of a relative, the worlds of nat- 
ural beauty and historical romance opened to receive him. 
The scenery of Tweedside and the ballads of the Border 
made him a poet. But for a long time he was content 
to feel poetry without feeling the impulse to express it. 
"The tree [at Kelso] is still in my recollection beneath 
which I lay and first entered upon the enchanting perusal of 
Percy's ReUques of Ancient Poetry, . . . but I had never 
dreamed of an attempt to imitate what gave me so much 
pleasure." 

After five years' irregular attendance at high school — 
unprofitable save for the education of the playground, the 
fights and the friendships of boyhood, and the bickers in 
the streets on the way to and from school — Scott entered 
the University of Edinburgh at the age of thirteen, but to 
scarcely any better advantage. He was never a scholar. 
Like Shakespeare, he knew a little Latin, and less Greek ; 
and as his style shows, without the need of his confession, 
he " never learned grammar." Yet he was, even then, pos- 
sessed of such an amount of history and poetry, collected at 
hap-hazard in his own unsystematic way, as would have en- 
riched his teachers and professors. Next to the old ballads 
his favorites were Froissart and Boccaccio, Spenser and 
Shakespeare. By-and-by, as soon as he felt the magic of 
foreign tale and song, he mastered in a manner sufficient for 
his purpose — which was never that of a scholar — the lan- 
guages of Germany, Spain, Italy, and France. He only read 
those languages for the treasures they contained. It was 
from the German romantic ballads of Biirger, as introduced 
to Edinburgh society by Mrs. Barbauld, that Scott first re- 
ceived the impulse to try his hand at verse composition. 
Accordingly, in 1796, at the age of twenty -five, he made his 
first appearance as author — " prevailed on by request of friends 
to indulge his own vanity by publishing the translation of 



280 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Lenore \_William and Heleri], with that of The Wild Hunts- 
man, in a thin quarto." 

Scott was at this time an advocate, or barrister, not at all 
troubled with clients, and amusing himself with yeomanry 
drill on Portobello sands. At the age of fifteen he had been 
apprenticed to the law in his father's office, and had been 
duly called to the bar on attaining his majority. But his 
heart was wholly given to poetry. His delight was in the 
lono; summer and autumn vacation. Six of these in succes- 
sion, beginning his first raid into Liddesdale the year he 
first wore wig and gown, he spent enthusiastically among the 
moors and dales of the Southern Lowlands, gathering ballads 
and legends, exploring old camps and ruined peels, and 
studying in all its phases the rough independent life of Border 
shepherds and farmers. But the enjoyment of those raids 
was their prime attraction to Scott. All his life, to a love of 
romance he added a boy's hearty relish of freedom and the 
country. Wherever he went in his rambles, his honest face, 
frank manners, and generous feeling found him friends ; 
whoever looked on him liked him. 

Scott's first love-affair was unfortunate, and he never 
quite got over the disappointment. It affected his health, 
and some of his friends thought he must die; but after 
bearing his grief about two years he was suflSciently heart- 
whole to marry Charlotte Carpenter, a lady of French ex- 
traction but educated in England, whom he first met at a 
watering-place in Cumberland. The marriage took place at 
Carlisle, on Christmas Eve, 1797, and they lived in a cot- 
tage-house at Lasswade. Two years later, his father having 
died in the interval, Scott was glad to receive the appoint- 
ment of sheriff-depute for Selkirkshire at a salary of £300. 
In the same year he wrote for " Monk " Lewis's Tales of 
Wonder another translation from the German, and, better 
still, his original ballads of The Eve of St. John and Glen- 
finlas. In 1802-1803 the fruit of Scott's vacation raids was 
seen in The Border Minstrelsy, in three volumes, copiously 
annotated. In the task of collecting material for this fa- 
mous magazine of Border ballads, Scott had been assisted by 



WALTER SCOTT 281 

many friends in different stations of life, but chiefly by 
Hogg and Ley den and Willie Laidlaw. In 1804, conse- 
quent on his sheriffship, Scott removed from Lasswade to 
Ashestiel, a small but comfortable house situated on a high 
wooded bank of Tweed. Here he lived till Abbotsford 
House was built. 

It was at Ashestiel that Scott entered upon his career as a 
minstrel, by the composition of his famous metrical romances. 
The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805) made him at once the 
most popular poet of the day. Marmion followed in 1808, 
and The Lady of the Lake in 1810. Scott's name was now 
in everybody's mouth. Between the appearance of The Lay 
and Marmion, Scott had been appointed to a clerkship in 
the Court of Session — a post which was presently worth 
£800 a year to him. With his professional income and the 
gains from his books, and especially the prospect of greater 
gains, he now began to cherish an ambition to own land and 
become a laird. Whatever would advance the scheme was 
adopted. He entered into secret partnership with the Bal- 
lantynes in the business of printing and publishing, and 
redoubled his literary industry. He was forty when he 
bought the first lands of Abbotsford. It was — before Scott 
reclaimed and named it — a bleak, bare, swampy stretch 
of farmland, with an evil name ; but it bordered beloved 
Tweed, and the locality was rich in associations. Here he 
built Abbotsford House — a romance in stone. It was the 
great delight of Scott's life to embellish and extend Abbots- 
ford, and entertain his friends there in princely style. This 
he was able to do by the enormous income he received from 
his novels and prose romances. 

He had turned to prose, without abandoning verse, a year 
or two after the publication of The Lady of the Lake. He 
never again in verse reached the success of that popular 
poem. Byron had appeared, and the public turned to salute 
the rising sun. But indeed Scott's verse had begun to pall, 
and his skill at the same time lost its first cunning; Rokehy 
(1812) was a comparative failure. The Lord of the Lsles 
(1815) was coldly received, and Harold the Dauntless (1817) 



282 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

was scarcely noticed. But with Waverley (in 1814) he sur- 
prised and recaptured a delighted world, and went on, in 
the long, brilliant series of novels and romances that followed 
Waverley^ from greater to still greater triumphs, dazzling 
and delighting. In 1813 Scott had declined the offer of the 
laureateship in favor of Southey. In 1820 he was made a 
baronet. His poems and novels do not represent the whole 
of Scott's labors during this busy time. He was careful in 
attending to his professional duties ; in politics and other 
current interests he took an active part; he contributed re- 
views to The Edinburgh, and when that periodical, in 1808, 
permitted an unjustly severe criticism of Marmion (from the 
pen of Jeffrey), he set about the foundation of The Quar- 
terly ; he edited Dryden in 1808, Swift in ]814, and some 
years later (in 1825) undertook an elaborate biography of 
Napoleon; and from time to time he made voyages and 
journeys — to the Hebrides (1814), to London and Paris (in 
1815, and again in 1827), and to Ireland (in 1824). 

In 1826 he was overtaken by a great reverse of fortune. 
The firm of Ballantyne & Co. failed, Scott was implicated, 
and found himself at fifty-five saddled with a debt of about 
£130,000. He gave up Abbotsford, refused to compound 
with his creditors, and, taking for his motto " Time and I 
against any two," mustered his energies, and, working four- 
teen hours a day, applied himself to the herculean task of 
repaying by his pen every penny of the debt. He con- 
tinued the novels, wrote The Tales of a Grandfather — a 
picturesque history of Scotland — and tried his hand at 
dramatic composition. His brain gave way under the ter- 
rible strain. In 1830 he had a stroke of paralysis, from 
which he never recovered. But the work he had done 
proved more than sufficient to pay all his debts. In 1831 
he was conveyed to Malta and Italy in a frigate, placed at 
his disposal by the government ; at Naples he attempted to 
resume his literary labors, but his power was gone; he came 
home to Abbotsford, and there, within sight and sound of 
the river he loved so well, he died, surrounded by friends, 
on the 21st of September, 1832. He was buried in Dry- 



WALTER SCOTT 283 

burgh Abbey beside his wife, who had died in the year 
after his great loss. His Last memorable words, uttered on 
the morning of his death, were, " To-night I shall know all." 
Scott was a rapid and careless writer, who aimed only at 
broad general effects. His best poems are The Lay, Mar- 
mion, and The Lady of the Lake, and the best passages in 
these describe action and the wild energy of battle. Next to 
his narrative power comes his power in describing scenery. 
The midnight gallop of William of Deloraine ; the battle of 
Flodden ; and the Stag-hunt, the Expedition of the Fiery 
Cross, the duel between Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu, and 
the battle of Beal' an Duine are characteristic specimens of 
his narrative power. His pictorial power is well exemplified 
in his description of Loch Katrine. His most finished verse 
is lyrical, and includes Bonnie Dundee, Jock o' Hazeldean, 
Lochinvar, Pibroch of Lonuil Dhu, The Eve of St. John, 
and Rebecca's Hymn, in the romance of Ivanhoe. These are 
among the freshest and most spirited or most musical of mod- 
ern English lyrics. His favorite measure was a more or less 
irregular verse of four accents. He adopted and devel- 
oped it from Coleridge's Christabel, which he had read ten 
years before its publication. Love of country, and the feel- 
ing of clanship — a modified form of patriotism — constituted 
the ruling passion of Scott, and were the deepest source 
of his poetry. 

"Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said 

* This is my own, my native land !' 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned 
As home his footsteps he hath turned 

From wandering on a foreign strand ? 
If such there be, go, mark him well: 
For him no minstrel-raptures swell ; 
High though his titles, proud his name, 
Boundless his wealth, as wish can claim. 
Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 
The wretch, concentred all in self. 
Living shall forfeit fair renown, 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 



284 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

To the vile dust from whence he sprung 
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung ! 

" O Caledonia ! stern and wild, 
Meet nurse for a poetic child ! 
Land of brown heath and shaggy wood, 
Land of the mountain and the flood, 
Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
Can e'er untie the filial band 
That knits me to thy rugged strand ?" 

— The Lay of the Last Minstrel. 

"No longer Autumn's glowing red 
Upon our Forest hills is shed ; 
No more, beneath the evening beam, 
Fair Tweed reflects their purple gleam : 
Away hath passed the heather-bell 
That bloomed so rich on Needpath Fell ; 
Sallow his brow, and russet bare 
Are now the sister-heights of Yair. 
The sheep, before the pinching heaven, 
To sheltered dale and down are driven, 
Where yet some faded herbage pines, 
And yet a watery sunbeam shines : 
In meek despondency they eye 
The withered sward and wintry sky, 
And far beneath their summer hill, 
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill: 
The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold. 
And wraps him closer from the cold; 
His dogs no merry circles wheel, 
But, shivering, follow at his heel; 
A cowering glance they often cast, 
As deeper moans the gathering blast," 

— Lntroduction to Marmion. 

"And O! loved warriors of the Minstrel's land! 

Yonder your bonnets nod, your tartans wave ! 
The rugged form may mark the mountain band, 

And harsher features, and a mien more grave; 
But ne'er in battle-field throbbed heart so brave 

As that which beats beneath the Scottish plaid ; 
And when the pibroch bids the battle rave. 

And level for the charge your arms are laid. 
Where lives the desperate foe that for such onset stayed?" 

— The Vision of Don Roderick. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 285 

" Sweet are the paths, O passing sweet 1 
By Eske's fair streams that run, 
O'er airy steep, thro' copsewood deep, 
Impervious to the sun. 

"There the rapt poet's step may rove, 
And yield the muse the day; 
There Beauty, led by timid Love, 
May shun the telltale ray ; 

"From that fair dome, where suit is paid 
By blast of bugle free, 
To Auchendinny's hazel glade, 
And haunted Woodhouselee. 

"Who knows not Melville's beechy grove. 
And Roslin's rocky glen, 
Dalkeith, which all the virtues love, 
And classic Hawthornden?" 

—The Gray Brother. 

"There is a nun in Dryburgh bower 
Ne'er looks upon the sun ; 
There is a monk in Melrose tower, 
He speaketh word to none, 

' ' That nun who ne'er beholds the day, 
That monk who speaks to none — 
That nun was Smaylho'me's Lady gay, 
That monk the bold Baron." 

—The Eve of St. John. 

" Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! 
To all the sensual world proclaim, 
One crowded hour of glorious life 
Is worth an age without a name." 

— Old Mortality. 

To intellectual and imaginative ability of the first order 
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) united an infirmity of 
purpose which marred the splendid promise of his youth. 
The amount of his verse is comparatively small ; it is of un- 
equal quality, and much of it is fragmentary ; yet it contains 



286 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

a proportion of such pure and exquisite poetry as sufficient- 
ly warrants his claim to the title of a great poet. " All that 
he did excellently," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, " might be 
bound up in twenty pages, but it should be bound in pure 
gold." 

He was born in the parish of Ottery St. Mary, in Devon- 
shire, where his father was vicar, and he was educated at 
Christ's Hospital, London, where Charles Lamb was one of 
his school -fellows. Even as a boy he was a great reader 
and dreamer, without any inclination for play, without even 
the scholar's ambition to excel. Though an admirable Gre- 
cian, he was content to become a shoemaker, and was about 
to apprentice himself to that humble calling when the head- 
master interfered, and he was sent, in his nineteenth year, 
to Jesus College, Cambridge. Here he stayed for two years, 
and gained some distinction for a Greek prize-ode ; but he 
was an erratic student, and displeased the college authori- 
ties by his sympathy with the principles of the French Rev- 
olution ; besides, he had fallen into debt, and now he fell in 
love. In despair he ran away from college, and enlisted in 
a regiment of Light Dragoons under an assumed name, 
which preserved his initials — Silas Tomkins Comberbach. 
After four months' misery in barracks he was bought off by 
his friends. Shortly afterwards he made the acquaintance 
of Southey, with whom, and some other kindred souls all 
afire with revolutionary ideas, he planned at Bristol the re- 
turn of the golden age in a Pantisocratic society in America. 
The experiment was to be made on the shores of the Sus- 
quehanna ; all were to be equal, all were to work with their 
hands and to devote their leisure to literature, and neither 
priest nor king was to burden the new commonwealth. But 
the experiment was not made — for want of money. 

Coleridge now took to public lecturing, and to editing a 
journal of prose and verse. The Watchrnan, which, however, 
would not sell. He married one of the Miss Frickers, and 
was living in a cottage at Nether Stowey, in Somersetshire. 
It was here he became associated with Wordsworth ; and 
here he spent two or three of the happiest years of his life, 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 287 

poetizing and dreaming. He was still young — and "Life 
went a-maying with Nature, Hope, and Poesy." His best 
poetical work was done or begun in those precious years. 
Here he wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, the first 
part of Christahel, and The Ode to the Departing Year 
(1795). The Ancient Mariner was first published, as one of 
Coleridge's contributions to The Lyrical Ballads, in 1798. 
That same year the generosity of some admirers enabled 
Coleridge to go to Germany, where he studied German lit- 
erature, and (unhappily) German metaphysics. When he 
returned to England it was to find his friends Wordsworth 
and Southey settled in the Lake District. He joined them, 
becoming an inmate in the house of his brother-in-law 
Southey, at Keswick. It was now that he published his 
poetical translation of Schiller's drama. The Life and Death 
of Wallenstein — believed to be the only translation which 
has improved on the original work. Meanwhile he was 
writing for The Morning Post. In 1804 he was for sev- 
eral months secretary to the Governor of Malta. After a 
tour in Italy he came back to the English Lakes, and re- 
sumed lecturing and editing. His second journal, The 
Friend, was only a little less unsuccessful than The Watch- 
man; but it contained a great deal of excellent criticism, 
along with much profound, if not always very intelligible, 
metaphysics. In 1816 he published Christahel. Of his 
prose works the most notable, perhaps, are some Lay Ser- 
mons, Biographia Literqria (1817), and Aids to Reflection 
(1825). 

It had long been manifest that, with his precarious means, 
Coleridge's character was too irresolute, and his life too ir- 
regular, to enable him to maintain himself. He had now 
become enslaved to opium ; his reluctance to write increased ; 
the grand hopes of his youth fled; "sense of past youth 
and manhood come in vain, and genius given and knowledge 
won in vain," oppressed without rousing him. He became 
dependent on the charitable hospitality of pitying admirers. 
The last nineteen years of his life were passed in the house 
of Mr. James Gillman, a surgeon, at Highgate, near London. 



288 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

This house was long the weekly haunt of young literary 
London, attracted to it by the philosophical talk — oracular 
in a double sense — of the " old man eloquent." 

To a strong power of beautiful and sublime imagination 
Coleridge added a wonderful charm of rhythm and melody. 
His best qualities will be found in The Ancient Mariner — a 
weird tale of the sea, written in the irregular measure of the 
old ballad ; Christabel, less popular than The Mariner, but 
the most perfect, though only a fragment, of all Coleridge's 
poetical work ; it is a romance of love and hate, in which 
the sensuous and the supernatural are strangely blended, 
and is written in a peculiar measure, based not on num- 
bers but .on a principle of accent ; various odes, especially 
The Ode to the Departing Year, and Dejection — An Ode ; a 
Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni, Miltonic in 
the rapturous force of its jubilation ; Khuhla Khan, com- 
posed in a dream, a marvellous fragment of harmony and 
imagery ; and such short pieces as Youth and Age, Love, and 
The Ballad of the Dark Ladie, which reveal the exquisitely 
tender side of his genius. 

"The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
The furrow followed free ; 
We were the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea. 

"Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 
'Twas sad as sad could be ; 
And we did speak only to break 
The silence of the sea ! 

" All in a hot and copper sky 
The bloody sun, at noon. 
Right up above the mast did stand, 
No bigger than the moon. 

"Day after day, day after day. 

We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 



SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 289 

"Water, water, everywhere, 

And all tlie boards did shrink ; 
Water, water, everywhere, 
Nor any drop to drink." 

— The Ancient Mariner. 

"O sweeter than the marriage- feast, 

'Tis sweeter far to me 
To walk together to the kirk 

With a goodly company ! — 
To walk together to the kirk, 

And all together pray. 
While each to his great Father bends, 
Old men, and babes, and loving friends 

And youths and maidens gay ! 
Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 

To thee, thou wedding-guest ! 
He prayetli well, who loveth well 

Both man and bird and beast. 
He prayeth best, who loveth best 

All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 

He made and loveth all." 

—Ibid. 

'"Tis the middle of the night by the castle clock, 
And the owls have awakened the crowing cock ; 
Tu-whit !— Tu-whoo ! 
And hark, again ! the crowing cock, 
How drowsily it crew. . . . 

" The night is chilly, but not dark. 
The thin gray cloud is spread on high, 
Tt covers but not hides the sky. 
The moon is behind, and at the full ; 
And yet she looks both small and dull. 
The night is chill, the cloud is gray : 
'Tis a month before the month of May, 
And the Spring comes slowly up this way. . . . 

"The night is chill, the forest bare ; 
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak ? 
There is not wind enough in the air 
To move away the ringlet curl 
From the lovely lady's cheek — 
There is not wind enough to twirl 



19 



290 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Tlie one red leaf, the last of its clan, 

That dances as often as dance it can, 

Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 

On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky." 

— Christabel, 

" Verse, a breeze 'mid blossoms straying, 
Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee— 

Both were mine ! Life went a-maying 
With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, 
When I was young ! 

When I was young ? — Ah, woful when ! 

Ah ! for the change 'twixt Now and Then ! 

This breathing house not built with hands, 

This body that does me grievous wrong, 

O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands 

How lightly then it flashed along : — 

Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore. 

On winding lakes and rivers wide, 

That ask no aid of sail or oar, 

That fear no spite of wind or tide ! 

Nought cared this body for wind or weather 

When Youth and I lived iu't together." 

— Youth and Age. 

George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), the most fa- 
mous English poet of aristocratic birth, was born in London, 
the only child of Captain John Byron of the Guards, and 
his wife Catherine Gordon, of Gight, in Aberdeenshire. He 
was unhappy in both his parents ; his father was utterly 
reckless and dissipated, and his mother was weak, vain, and 
passionate to the verge of madness. The boy was brought 
up in very humble circumstances in Aberdeen from his sec- 
ond to his eleventh year, and acquired a passion for wild 
mountain scenery which he never afterwards lost, and never 
ceased to associate with Scotland : " Lochnagar, with Ida, 
looked o'er Troy." In 1798 he succeeded, on the death of 
his grand-uncle, to the title of Lord Byron and the family 
estates of Newstead in Nottingham. His education was 
now transferred to a preparatory school near London, where 
he was fitted for Harrow; and in 1805 he was admitted to 
Trinity College, Cambridge. At the university, where he 
remained two years, he was more distinguished for his love 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 291 

of athletics and his eccentricities than for study ; in spite 
of his lameness he practised out -door sports, cricket, and 
rowing ; and among other irregularities within the college 
he insisted on keeping bull-dogs and a bear. 

He had already been composing verses at Harrow, in- 
spired by nature and the passion of boyish love — more es- 
pecially a passionate but silent attachment, in his fifteenth 
year, for Mary Chaworth; and now, before he was twenty, 
he published his first volume of verse under the title of 
Hours of Idleness. It was by no means a promising effort, 
bat the onslaught made upon it by Brougham in The Edin- 
burgh Review was quite unjustified. The merciless critique 
roused the indignation of Byron, and indignation inspired a 
reply in the brilliantly rhetorical satire English Bards and 
Scotch Reviewers, written not only in the Popian couplet, but 
with much of the force and point of Pope. It was an 
effective Parthian shot. 

Byron immediately withdrew from England for a two 
years' cruise and tour among the seas and peninsulas of 
Southern Europe ; and on his return gave superior assurance 
of his poetic power by the publication of the first two can- 
tos of Childe Harold, a poem, in the Spenserian measure, de- 
scriptive of the scenes through which he had lately passed, 
and the impressions they had left on his mind. He awoke 
and found himself famous. The sudden favorite of fashion- 
able London, he was flattered and feted on every hand. He 
was only too much inclined to accept the universal adula- 
tion, and entered upon a course of dissipation, which ended, 
as it could only end, in satiety and disgust. He was not, 
however, idle ; his visit to the Mediterranean shores con- 
tinued to inspire him with fresh themes for poetry, and he 
threw off in rapid and dazzling succession The Giaour and 
The Bride of Abydos (1813), The Corsair and Zam (1814)— 
Turkish metrical tales of wild and novel adventure, before 
which the more wholesome but less sensational rhymed ro- 
mances of Scott seemed to pale. Meanwhile Byron had 
taken his seat, and spoken, but without exciting much inter- 
est, in the House of Lords. 



292 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

He had married (1815), when at the height of his popu- 
larity, Miss Milbanke, the daughter of a Durhamshire bar- 
onet; but they had been united only a year when the lady, 
alleging as her reason his cruelty or madness, refused to live 
with him. Public feeling, without much judgment in the 
matter, was on her side. Byron suddenly found himself 
the object of a storm of execration from all quarters, and 
haughtily withdrew forever from England in 1816, declar- 
ing that either he was unfit for England, or England was 
unfit for him. Before his departure he published his He- 
brew Melodies, The Siege of Corinth, and Parisina. It \vas 
the outcry against him that once more stimulated him to 
poetical activity. He proceeded to Switzerland by the 
Rhine, and, coming to Italy, spent the most of the remain- 
ing eight years of his life in wild irregularity at Venice, 
Pisa, Leghorn, etc. In Italy he made the acquaintance of 
Shelley, and never ceased to keep up his connection with 
poetry. It was at Venice, at the age of thirty, that he 
finished Childe Harold- — the concluding canto giving still 
greater testimony of the magnificent energy of his poetical 
genius. He had already written The Prisoner of Chillon, The 
Lament of Tasso, and the tragedy of Manfred. He was 
afterwards to w^-itc Sardanapalus and Cain, both of them 
dramas ; Beppo and The Vision of Judgment,; and sixteen 
cantos of Don Juan. The Greek war of independence 
aroused and enlisted his sympathies in 1823, and he went 
to Greece to give personal aid to the cause of freedom, 
when he was struck down by fever, and died at Misso- 
longhi in his thirty-seventh year. 

The expression of Byron comes with a rush ; energy is 
its distinguishing quality, and next to that are its variety, 
copiousness, and melodious ease. Both Nature and Man 
were his theme. It was the reflection of his own moods in 
nature that charmed him, and he was never so happy as 
when contemplating the fierce freedom and wild turbulency 
of the elements. His descriptions of the passive strength 
of mountains, and the contending fury of seas and cata- 
racts, and all the sublime mysteries of night and storm and 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 293 

darkness, are magnificent and unmatched. His interpre- 
tation of Man underwent a remarkable development. At 
first it was mainly a sympathetic exposition of his own 
greatly magnified and wholly undeserved woes, accompanied 
with ineffable scorn of the vulgar pursuits and pleasures 
of mankind. lie posed in the foreground of his mag- 
nificent natural descriptions in the various guises of Childe 
Harold and Lara, Manfred and Cain. But in Don Juan he 
flings off the trammels of a mysterious and misanthropical 
personality ; he escapes from self, and delineates with wit, 
satirical humor, and wonderful power of penetration into 
character, all the varying phases of human life and society. 
His true vocation here reveals itself as that of the reforming 
humorist, whose weapon is satire ; and, while objection may 
be taken on the score of morality to the methods he em- 
ployed, the result, as a work of art, must be confessed to be 
a masterpiece. The development from self to society in Lis 
treatment of Man is marked by a corresponding change in 
the form and tone of his verse ; he gave up the romantic 
Spenserian and other dignified measures for the infinitely 
more free and flexible ottava rima. It is supposed, with 
some reasonableness, that if Byron had lived longer he 
would have combined prose with verse, or found, like Scott, 
that prose could be made the freer, speedier, and even more 
effective vehicle of poetry. 



There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away, 
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay; 
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone which fades 

so fast, 
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be 

past. . . . 

Oh ! could I feel as I have felt — or be what I have been, 
Or weep as I could once have wept, o'er many a vanished scene; 
As springs in deserts found seem sweet, all brackish though 

they be. 
So midst the withered waste of life, those tears would flow 

tome." — Stanzas for Music. 



294 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

" Adieu, adieu ! my native shore 

Fades o'er the waters blue ; 
The night- winds sigh, the breakers roar, 

And shrieks the wild sea-mew. 
You sun that sets upon the sea 

We follow in his flight: 
Farewell awhile to him and thee, 

My native land— good-night ! . . . 

" With thee, my bark, I'll swiftly go 
Athwart the foaming brine ; 
Nor care what land thou bear'st me to, 

So not again to mine. 
Welcome, welcome, ye dark blue waves ! 

And when you fail my sight. 

Welcome, ye deserts and ye caves ! 

My native land — good-night !" 

— Ghilde Harold's Pilgrimage, canto i. 

" There was a sound of revelry by night, 

And Belgium's capital had gathered then 

Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright 

The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men ; 

A thousand hearts beat happily ; and when 

Music arose with its voluptuous swell, 

Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again. 

And all went merry as a marriage bell ; 
But hush ! hai'k ! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell 1 

"Did ye not hear it? No ; 'twas but the wind, 

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street ; 

On with the dance ! let joy be unconfined ; 

No sleep till morn when youth and pleasure meet 

To chase the glowing hours with flying feet. 

But hark !— that heavy sound breaks in once more, 

As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before ! 
Arm ! arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's opening roar !" 

—Ibid., canto iii. 21, 22. 

" The sky is changed !— and such a change ! O night, 
And storm, and darkness, ye are wondrous strong, 
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the light 
Of a dark eye in woman ! Far along, 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags among 



GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 295 

Leaps the live thunder ! Not from one lone cloud, 
But every mountain now hath found a tongue ; 
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, 
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud! 

"And this is in the night: Most glorious night! 
Thou wert not sent for slumber ! let me be 
A sharer in thy fierce and far delight— 
A portion of the tempest and of thee ! 
How the lit lake shines, a phosphoric sea, 
And the big rain comes dancing to the earth 1 
And now again 'tis black ; and now, the glee 
Of the loud hills shakes with its mountain -mirth. 

As if they did rejoice o'er a young earthquake's birth." 

—Ibid, canto iii. 92, 93. 

" I see before me the Gladiator lie : 

He leans upon his hand — his manly brow 

Consents to death, but conquers agony. 

And his drooped head sinks gradually low — 

And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 

From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one. 

Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 

The arena swims around him : he is gone. 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won. 

" He heard it, but he heeded not : his eyes 
Were with his heart, and that was far away ; 
He recked not of the life he lost nor prize, 
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, 
There were his young barbarians all at play. 
There was their Dacian mother— he, their sire, 
Butchered to make a Roman holiday — 
All this rushed with his blood— Shall he expire, 

And unavenged ?— Arise ! ye Goths, and glut your ire !" 

— Ihid., canto iv. 140, 141. 

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean— roll ! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain ; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his control 
Stops with the shore ;— upon the watery plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When for a moment, like a drop of rain, 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan, 

Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." 

— Ibid. , canto iv. 179. 



296 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

"Then rose from sea to sky the wild farewell — 

Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave — 

Then some leaped overboard with dreadful yell, 
As eager to anticipate their grave ; 

And the sea yawned around her like a hell, 
And down she sucked with her the whirling wave, 

Like one who grapples with his enemy, 

And strives to strangle him before he die. 

" And first one universal shriek there rushed, 
Louder than the loud ocean, like a crash 
Of echoing thunder; and then all was hushed, 
Save the wild wind and the remorseless dash 
Of billows ; but at intervals there gushed. 
Accompanied with a convulsive splash, 
A solitary shriek, the bubbling cry 
Of some strong swimmer in his agony." 

— Don Juan, canto ii. 

" O Hesperus ! thou bringest all good things — 
Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer. 

To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, 
The welcome stall to the o'erlabored steer. 

"Whate'er of peace about our head-stone clings, 
Whate'cr our household gods protect of dear. 

Are gathered round us by thy look of rest ; 

Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. 

"Soft hour! which M^akes the wish and melts the heart 
Of those who sail the seas, on the first day 
When they from their sweet friends are toi-n apart ; 

Or fills with love the i^ilgrim on his way, 
As the far bell of vesper makes him start. 
Seeming to weep the dying day's decay : 
Is this a fancy which our reason scorns ? 
Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns." 

— Ibid., canto iii, 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) was the son and heir 
of a wealthy Sussex baronet. More even than Byron was he 
a product of the French Revolution. Born in 1792, he was 
permeated by the spirit of that wild time from his child- 
hood. It animated and directed the energies of his youth 
in a rebellious aggressive struggle with almost every form of 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 297 

recognized authority. His life -long attitude towards the 
past and its traditionary customs and institutions was one of 
decided antagonism. All his hopes were rooted in the fut- 
ure, all his joys were among its possibilities. The pict- 
uresque past in which Scott's genius loved to luxuriate had 
no attraction for him. His golden age was in the future, 
and he bent the whole of his passionate energies to hasten 
its coming. 

At Eton he set himself in opposition to his teachers and 
his school-fellows ; in the class-room he refused to follow 
the prescribed order of lessons ; in the playground he ob- 
jected to fag. In his preface to The Revolt of Islam he tells 
us that the voices of the school-room were already in his ear 
but " one echo from a world of woes — the harsh and grating 
strife of tyrants and of foes." His antagonism to the estab- 
lished systems of education was more pronounced when he 
went to Oxford. He cared to learn nothing that his " ty- 
rants " knew or taught, but took earnestly to forbidden 
courses of study, and became sceptical in religion and revo- 
lutionary in politics. He had the courage of his convictions. 
At the age of seventeen he challenged the university author- 
ities to a discussion of his heretical opinions. He circulated 
a pamphlet to which he gave the title of The Necessity of 
Atheism^ and he wrote the atheistical poem of Queen Mab. 

Expelled from Oxford, and disowned by his father as a 
reprobate, he contracted a Gretna Green marriage in his 
nineteenth year with Harriet Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, 
the daughter of a retired innkeeper. Within three years he 
abandoned his wife and her two children. The stain on his 
conduct, which time has failed to cleanse, lies here. In her 
despondency Harriet Westbrook committed suicide, and only 
a few weeks after the event Shelley married Mary Godwin, 
daughter of Godwin the novelist. Society avenged itself by 
a decree of the Court of Chancery, which deprived the poet 
of the custody of his children. He continued to offend so- 
ciety by the audacity of his opinions, as expressed more or 
less allegorically in his poetry and metrical metaphysics. 
He never departed from his early convictions, but kept 



298 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

pushing and promulgating them with the full power of his 
maturing genius. After producing Alastor (1816) and The 
Revolt of Islam (1818) — the latter written in friendly rival- 
ry with Keats, whose rival poem was Endymion — Shelley 
removed to Italy for the remainder of his short life. 

Under the inspiration of "that divinest climate" he 
wrote those astonishing masterpieces, the lyrical drama of 
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and the appalling tragedy of 
The Cenci (1819), along with such a body of other sublime 
and beautiful verse as would make famous any age in which 
it appeared. In Italy he became acquainted with Byron, 
and the masterly poem of Julian and Maddalo commem- 
orates one of their conversations. His poetical work in 
Italy also includes The Witch of Atlas, Ejnpsychidion, Ado- 
nais (a lament for Keats), Hellas, and the Hymn to Mer- 
cury. But it is his lyrics that keep him popular — such as 
The Cloud, To a Skylark, Arethusa, Ode to the West Whid, 
The Pine Forest, and The Sensitive Plant. His short life 
of thirty years came to a sudden end. His boat went 
down, or was run down, in a storm on the Bay of Spez- 
zia, when he was returning with some friends to Lerici 
from a visit to Leigh Hunt, at Leghorn. His body was re- 
covered, and cremated on the beach ; and the ashes were 
entombed, under the simple inscription Cor Cordium, in the 
Protestant burial-ground at Rome. 

Shelley's life shows a record singularly free from vice. 
No happier home probably ever existed than the home 
which he and Mary Godwin established in Italy. The pro- 
fession of benevolence is broadcast in his writings — the 
virtue was at no time absent from the practice of his daily 
life. His sympathy with the poor and oppressed was 
habitually shown by his frequent visits to their cottages, 
his considerate counsel and interest in their affairs, his gifts 
and numerous acts of service, his willingly offered friend- 
ship. He preached the equality of man, and he proved 
that he was willing to practise it. His great idea was the 
perfectibility of mankind ; but perfection could never be 
attained throuo:h Church or State, which, constituted as he 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



299 



found them, he regarded as traditionary trammels invented 
by the few for the subjection of the many. They were ob- 
stacles in the path of human progress, to be battered down 
and removed. This was the aggressive side of his teach- 
ing. He was not opposed to religion as he understood it ; 
but between the practice of the Church and its professed 
aims he saw a huge and hideous contrast. The Church 
preached the millennium, the golden age of his own dreams, 
but it devoted its energies to the enjoyment of its present 
power — it had found its millennium; what more did it 
need ? In the language of Milton, it " was sped." Shelley 
was at one with AVordsworth in looking for the regenera- 
tion of society to the perfection of the individual. He had 
no faith in State machinery ; the State was only what in- 
dividuals made it. Finding here and there in all ages of 
the world's history individual lives of true nobility, he rea- 
soned : 

" Why is this noble creature to be found 
One only among thousands? What one is 
Why may not mankind be ?" 

This was the reasoning that convinced Shelley of the per- 
fectibility of man, and filled his imagination with dreams of 
a future earthly paradise. 

At least one other doctrine of Wordsworth's was the 
creed of Shelley — the sympathy of mute nature with the 
spirit of man. Man had broken away from, was at least 
out of touch with, this sympathy, and the regeneration of 
the race was in progress wherever, between the individual 
and nature, the bond was re-established. Good, universal 
good, would be the result when the spirit of love in man 
was at last wedded to the waiting and long-expectant spirit 
of love in nature. This belief in a living and loving Nature 
accounts for the numerous glowing descriptions of natural 
scenes which form such a prominent feature of the poetry 
of Shelley. 

The style of Shelley is admirably expressive of the quali- 
ties of his genius. It is the natural embodiment of his 



300 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

thought. Subtlety and sublimity of idea were never better 
represented than in his free and fluent lines. His element, 
like Ariel's, is the air — whither it is not seldom fatiguing to 
follow his flights, and whence one returns with a sense of 
relief to the more mundane world, to rest on the glen-side 
with Scott or buffet the sea-billows with Byron. 

" Emily, 
A ship is floating in the harbor now, 
A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow; 
There is a path on the sea's azure floor, 
No keel has ever ploughed that path before; 
The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ; 
The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles; 
The merry mariners are bokl and free : 
Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? 
Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest 
Is a far Eden of the purple East; 
And we between her wings will sit, while Night 
And Day, and Storm, and Calm pursue their flight, 
Our ministers, along the boundless sea. 
Treading each other's heels, unheededly." 

— Epipsycliidion. 

"I love all waste 
And solitary places , where we taste 
The pleasure of believing what we see 
Is boundless, as we wish our souls to be : 
And such was this wide ocean, and this shore 
More barren than its billows ; and yet more 
Than all, with a remembered friend I love 
To ride as I then rode ; — for the winds drove 
The living spray along the sunny air 
Into our faces ; the blue heavens Avere bare. 
Stripped to their depths by the awakening north ; 
And, from the waves, sound like delight broke forth 
Harmonizing with solitude, and sent 
Into our hearts aerial merriment. 
So, as we rode, we talked ; and the swift thought. 
Winging itself with laughter, lingered not. 
But flew from brain to brain— such glee was ours. 
Charged with light memories of remembered hours, 
None slow enough for sadness : till we came 
Homeward, which always makes the spirit tame." 

— Julian and Maddalo. 



PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 



301 



" We look before and after, 
And pine for what is not : 
Our sincerest laughter 
With some pain is fraught ; 
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. 

" Better than all measures 
Of delightful sound, 
Better than all treasures 
That in books are found, 
Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground! 

" Teach me half the gladness 
That thy brain must know, 
Such harmonious madness 
From my lips would flow. 
The world should listen then, as I am listening now." 

— To a Skylark 

" We wandered to the pine forest 
That skirts the ocean's foam, 
The lightest wind was in its nest, 
The tempest in its home. 

" The whispering waves were half asleep, 
The clouds were gone to play, 
And on the woods, and on the deep. 
The smile of Heaven lay. 

" It seemed as if the day were one 
Sent from beyond the skies. 
Which shed to earth above the sun 
A light of Paradise." 

— The Pine Forest. 



" He has outsoared the shadow of our night; 
Envy and calumny, and hate and pain, 
And that unrest wiiicli men miscall delight. 
Can touch him not and torture not again 
From the contagion of the world's slow stain 
He is secure, and now can never mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in vain ; 
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to burn. 

With sparkless ashes load an unlamented urn. 



302 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

" He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not he; 
Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou, j'oung Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone ; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to moan ! 
Cease, ye faint flowers and fountains, and thou Air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it bare 

Even to the joyous stars which smile on its despair. 

"He is made one with Nature ; there is heard 
His voice in all her music, from the moan 
Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird ; 
He is a presence to be felt and known 
In darkness and in light, from herb and stone, 
Spreading itself where'er that Power may move 
Which has withdrawn his being to its own ; 
Which wields the world with never-wearied love. 

Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above. . . . 

"The One remains, the many change and pass; 
Heaven's light forever shines. Earth's shadows fly; 
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass 
Stains the white radiance of eternity." 

—Adonais. 



In the same cemetery at Rome where are laid the ashes of 
Shelley, who survived only to lament his friend's early death, 
lie the mortal remains of John Keats (1796-1821), a poet 
of great promise and of no uncertain performance. He was 
born in the house of his grandfather, who kept a livery- 
stable at Moorfield, was educated at Enfield, and apprenticed 
in his fifteenth year to a surgeon at Edmonton. His bent 
of mind, however, was to poetry ; he knew and admired Vir- 
gil, revelled in Spenser, and made his first acquaintance 
with Greek poetry forever memorable by a sonnet of rare 
imaginative power and beauty entitled On First Looking into 
Chapman^s Homer. The beauty of Greek literary art he 
knew only through the medium of English, yet no one was 
ever more fully informed with the spirit of Greek poetry. 
Its mythological legends furnished him with his most con- 



JOHN KEATS 



303 



genial themes and inspired his best efforts. Enchjmion, pub- 
lished in 1818, Lamia, and the magnificent Miltonic frag- 
ment of Hyperion, published in 1820, with the inimitable 
Ode on a Grecian Urn, were the outcome of his study, or 
rather intuition, of classical life in ancient Greece. He also 
explored the rich fields of mediaeval romance, from which 
he returned with a harvest of such exquisite poetry as is 
comprised in Isabella, or The Pot of Basil, The Eve of St. 
Agnes, and the fragmentary Eve of St. Mark. 

When Endymion fii-st appeared it was savagely attacked 
in The Quarterly Review by a writer whom Shelley stigma- 
tized as "a noteless blot on a remembered name." Keats 
keenly felt the injustice and even brutality of the attack, and 
there seems no reason to doubt that it quickened, if it did 
not create, the disease of which he died. But other than 
literary cares — the illness of a brother, whom he sedulous- 
ly tended, and an unfortunate love attachment — harassed a 
mind naturally supersensitive, and tried a constitution natu- 
rally delicate. Under the care of his devoted artist friend, 
Joseph Severn, the poet sought health in Italy, but went 
thither only to die. He was not more than twenty-five at 
the time of his death. 

Though fetching his themes from ancient times, Keats, in 
the matter of style, is altogether modern. He is the founder 
of what has been called the literary or artistic school of po- 
etry, and his influence is still manifest on the art of living 
writers. He wrote unaffected by the spirit of the times in 
which he lived. Byron's sphere was the present, Shelley ex- 
patiated on the future, but Keats turned to the past, and 
found refuge and rest in a world of departed beauty. Sen- 
suous beauty was the great object of his worship and de- 
light ; the opening verse of his own Endymion is the key-note 
of his poetry — " A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Fit- 
ting, therefore, was his last resting-place under " the vault of 
blue Italian day," and on " a slope of green access " — 

*' Where, like an mfant's smile, over the dead 
A light of laughing flowers along the grass is spread." 



304 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

The cemetery, wrote Shelley, is an open space among the 
ruins of Rome, " covered with violets and daisies. It might 
make one in love with death to think that one should be 
buried in so sweet a place." 

" Leading the way, young damsels danced along, 
Bearing the burden of a shepherd's song; 
Each having a white wicker, overbrimmed 
With April's tender younglings : next, well-trimmed, 
A crdVd of shepherds with as sunburnt looks 
As may be read of in Arcadian books ; 
Such as sat listening round Apollo's pipe, 
When the great deity, for earth too ripe, 
Let his divinity o'erflowing die 
In music, through the vales of Thessaly : 
Some idly trailed their sheep-hooks on the ground, 
And some kept up a shrilly mellow sound 
With ebon-tipped flutes : close after these, 
Now coming from beneath the forest trees, 
A venerable priest full soberly. 
Begirt with ministering looks : alway his eye 
Steadfast upon the matted turf he kept. 
And after him his sacred vestments swept." 

—Endymion. 

"As men talk in a dream, so Corinth all, 
Throughout her palaces imperial, 
And all her populous streets and temples lewd, 
Muttered, like tempest in the distance brewed, 
To the wide-spreaded night above her towers. 
Men, women, rich and poor, in the cool hours, 
Shuflled their sandals o'er the pavement white, 
Companioned or alone ; while many a light 
Flared, here and there, from wealthy festivals. 
And threw their moving shadows on the walls. 
Or found them clustered in the corniced shade 
Of some arched temple door, or dusky colonnade." 

— Lamia. 

"Deep in the shady sadness of a vale 
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn. 
Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star. 
Sat gray-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone. 
Still as the silence round about his lair ; 



JOHN KEATS 3O5 

Forest on forest hiiug about his head 

Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, 

Not so much life as on a summer's day 

Robs not one light seed from the feathered grass, 

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. 

A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more 

By reason of his fallen divinity 

Spreading a shade : the Naiad 'mid her reeds 

Pressed her cold fingers closer to her lips. 

Along the margin-sand large footmarks went, 
No further than to where his feet had strayed. 
And slept there since. Upon the sodden ground 
His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, 
Unsceptred ; and his realmless eyes were closed ; 
While his bowed head seemed listening to the Earth, 
His ancient m(^ther, for some comfort yet. 

It seemed no force could wake him from his place ; 
But there came one, who with a kindred hand 
Touched his wide shoulders, after bending low 
With revereuce, though to one who knew it not." 

— Hyperion. 

"Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 
To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest ? 
What little town by river or sea-shore, 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of its folk this pious morn ? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be ; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return." 

— Ode on a Orecian Urn. 



"Much have I travelled in the realms of gold, 
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen ; 
Round many Western islands have I been 

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold : 

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
20 



306 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 

Looked at each other with a wild surmise — 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien." 

— On First Looking into Ghapman's Homer. 

" 'Hark ! 'tis an elfin-storm from faery land, 
Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed : 
Arise— arise ! the morning is at hand ; — 
The bloated wassailers will never heed : 
Let us away, my love, with happy speed ; 
There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see, — 
Drowned all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead : 
Awake ! arise ! my love, and fearless be, 

For. o'er the Southern moors I have a home for thee.' 

" She hurried at his words, beset with fears, 
For there were sleeping dragons all around. 
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears — 
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found. 
In all the house was heard no human sound. 
A chain-drooped lamp was flickering by each door ; 
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound. 
Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar ; 

And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. 

" They glide like phantoms into the wide hall ! 
Like phantoms to the iron porch they glide 
Where lay the Porter in uneasy sprawl 
With a huge empty flagon by his side : 
The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his, hide, 
But his sagacious eye an inmate owns : 
By one and one, the bolts full easy slide ; — 
The chains lie silent on the footworn stones ; 

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans. 

"And they are gone : ay, ages long ago 
These lovers fled away into the storm. 
That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe ; 
And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form 
Of witch and demon and large coffin- worm, 
Were long be-nightmared. Angela the old 
Died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform ; 
The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, 

For aye unsought-for slept among his ashes cold." 

—The Eve of St. Agnes. 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 307 

Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was the third of a 
large family of children, of whom seven were sons, born to 
the Rev. George Clayton Tennyson and Elizabeth Fytche, 
his wife. Dr. Tennyson, distinguished for his personal 
strength and stature, and for his love of music, was rector 
of Somersby, and it was there, in the wolds of Mid-Lin- 
colnshire, that the poet was born. But he was not the 
only poet of the family : his elder brothers, Frederick and 
Charles, were also possessed of the poetical faculty, and pub- 
lished verse of considerable merit. It was under the en- 
couragement of Charles, his favorite brother, that Alfred 
wrote his earliest verses while still a mere child, and it was 
in conjunction with him that he first appeared before the 
public in a slender volume, published in 1826, entitled 
Poems by Tioo Brother's. The book attracted little attention, 
but the father of the young poets predicted for Alfred a 
great career. 

After a classical training at Louth, near Somersby, Alfred 
was sent in 1828 to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dis- 
tinguished himself there by a prize-poem in blank-verse on 
the subject of Timbuctoo. At college, among his other 
intimate companions, were men afterwards known to fame, 
such as Dean Alford, Lord Houghton, Professor Lushing- 
ton, and Arthur Henry Hallam — the last the son of the his- 
torian, and the subject of one of the finest elegies in the 
English language — In Memoriam. 1\\ the year of his ma- 
jority (1830) Tennyson again ventured before a public slow 
to offer him a welcome, though the new book of verse con- 
tained some charming lyrics, such as The Ballad of Ori- 
ana, Recollections of the Arabian Nights, and Mariana in the 
Moated Grange. Next year his father died, and his college 
course was interrupted. 

He now paid a visit to the south of France, and on his 
return issued another volume of Lyrics (in 1833), which 
showed, in The Maij Queen, Lady Clara Verede Vere, The Lo- 
tos-Eaters, etc., the great advance he had made in poetical 
expression. This volume was worthy of a warmer reception 
than the critics or the public gave it, and the poet sang 



308 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

only to himself for the next nine years. During this inter- 
val of silence he made London his home, but from time to 
time maintained his relations with nature by many excur- 
sions in Lincolnshire. 

At last, in 1842, by the publication of Poems in two vol- 
umes, he caught the ear of the public ; and he has kept it 
ever since. Even Wordsworth, then near the end of his 
long and honored career, and always chary of praise to a 
contemporary, owned that he " was decidedly the first of 
our living poets." Among the contents of those two vol- 
umes were Locksley Hall, The Gardener's Daughter, and 
the first preludings on the great Arthurian theme — Morte 
d^ Arthur. \\\ 1847 he greatly improved his position among 
English poets by The Princess — a Medley. It is a species 
of epic in blank-verse, interspersed with lyrics, of marvel- 
lous melody, in which the earnest treatment of a great 
question — the intellectual equality of women with men — 
is almost concealed under playful touches of satire. 

In 1833 young Hallam, then a student of law, and en- 
gaged to one of the poet's sisters, had unexpectedly died at 
Vienna in his twenty-second year. His loss, which was 
keenly felt, gave Tennyson one of his greatest themes. 
Night and day for several years he brooded over his sorrow, 
and found relief in " the sad mechanic exercise " of ex- 
pressing it in "measured language." The ultimate result 
was a long series of much over a hundred elegiac strains, 
expressive of the varying moods of the mourner, from bitter 
anguish of heart to placid resignation, and bearing the sim- 
ple title In Memoriam A. H. II. The measure, though he 
did not invent it, he has made his own ; it is a quatrain of 
iambic octosyllabics, the rhymes falling agreeably with the 
formula — a b b a. The poem was published in 1850, and as- 
sured to the author the foremost place among living poets. 

The year was otherwise memorable in the poet's history. 
It was the year of his marriage with Emily Sellwood, and 
of his accession to the laureateship. His work proper as 
laureate included the composition of poems on passing 
events of great public interest; but on those themes, which 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 309 

were rather forced upon liim than left to his free choice, he 
has not been too successful, though exception may be made 
in favor of portions of an Ode on the Death of Welling- 
ton (1852), and more especially his spirited Charge of the 
Light Brigade, written in 1854. On his marriage Tenny- 
son settled at Twickenham, whither he returned from a 
flying visit with his wife to Northern Italy. But in 1853 
he transferred his household to Farringford, in Freshwater, 
a parish on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight. Far- 
ringford remained his only residence till 1870, when he 
began to make summer and autumn migrations to Aid- 
worth, near Haslemere, in Surrey, where he had built for 
himself another house on the heights of Blackdown. 

His long residence at Farringford was one of close poeti- 
cal seclusion, from which he seldom emerged into society. 
He had all his life an almost morbid aversion to society, 
though in the course of his bachelor wanderings he mixed 
and talked freely with strangers to whom he was unknown. 
To those in the great world whom he admitted to his confi- 
dence he could be " sweet as summer." His poetry reflects 
the scenery of his chosen haunts. The " glooming flats" of 
Lincolnshire, its '' level wastes and rounding grey," appear in 
his early poems; every one will recall in The May Queen 
his realistic description of the summer airs blowing " cool 
from the dry dark wold " over sword-grass and reed-grass 
and " the bulrush in the pool." A new character of scen- 
ery, caught from the Isle of Wight, shows itself in his later 
verse. He himself has sketched the landscape at Farring- 
ford : 

' ' Groves of pine on either hand 

To break the blast of winter stand , 
And further on, the hoary channel 

Tumbles a billow on chalk and sand." 

From his island nest the poet made from time to time many 

flights to Cornwall and Dartmoor, to North Wales, to 

Yorkshire ; to the crags of Argyleshire and the islets of the 
Inner Hebrides ; to Southern France, a twice-repeated visit ; 
and to the land of Goethe, where in 1865 he visited Wei- 



310 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

mar and Dresden. In 1883 he made a visit with the prime- 
minister to Copenhagen, and recited some of his poetry to 
the Danish court. In 1884 he was raised to the peerage 
amid the congratulations of the nation. 

His poetical vein, to use the metaphor of Milton, never 
ceased to flow, down to the year of his death. Its natural 
force showed scarcely any sign of abatement. Year by year 
to the last he added fresh laurels to his crown ; year after 
year he rose in popular favor and national esteem. His po- 
etical work at Farringford is a long and brilliant record of 
varied triumphs. Maud — a Monodrama, appeared in 1855 ; 
The Idyls of the King, commencing with the first four 
in 1858, and extending by instalments to the number of 
twelve, were completed in 1886 ; Enoch Arden and Aylmefs 
Field were issued in 1864. In 1875 Tennyson, at the age 
of sixty-six, entered on his career as a dramatist ; in that 
year was published his Queen Mary ; Harold followed two 
years later; then came The Falcon, acted in 1879, and The 
Cup, in 1881 ; Becket appeared in 1884; and subsequently, 
though of less note, his domestic drama of The Promise of 
May, followed in 1892 by The Foresters — a dramatic treat- 
ment of the Sherwood legend of Robin Hood. There were 
in addition volumes of lyrics and ballads, tales in dialect, 
and poems dealing with the profoundest subjects in sci- 
ence and philosophy. Some of these may be specified: 
Tiresias appeared in 1885 ; Locksley Hall, Sixty Years After, 
in 1886; Demeter in 1889. 

Tennyson not only preserved his poetical activity and 
vigor to the end of his long, happy, and honorable career, 
but enjoyed the delights of travel so late as 1891, in which 
year he paid a visit to Devonshire. Death came calmly at 
last; in his own beautiful metaphor, he "crossed the bar" 
and "put out to sea" as he had wished — without any 
" moaning of the tide." He died in his Surrey house at Aid- 
worth in October, 1892, aged eighty -three years and two 
months, and was buried in Westminster Abbey, The title 
went to his elder son Hallam ; the younger, Lionel, prede- 
ceased his father by six years. Shortly after Tennyson's 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 311 

death the last of his poems were published under the title 
of The Death of CEnone^ Akhafs Dream^ and Other Poems. 

One of the most striking featnres of the ample work of 
Tennyson is the great range of his themes. They are 
mostly English — English characters, English incidents, Eng- 
lish landscapes. And next after English subjects is his 
preference for classical ones. A not less striking feature of 
his poetry is the great variety of his measures. There is 
scarcely a kind he has not tried, and he has been successful 
in all. He has besides invented new rhythms, and dis- 
covered — even in blank -verse — new harmonies. No poet 
has equalled him in the power of adapting style to subject ; 
invariably with Tennyson subject and style are hand in 
glove. The general characteristics of his style are picto- 
rial clearness, musical smoothness, and rich, often romantic, 
melody. He is the poet of finish. But there is no want 
of force, both intellectual and impassioned — conveyed now 
in the abundant, impetuous, and glowing imagery of LocJcsley 
Hall, and now in the simple and severe massiveness of out- 
line in the more heroic of the Idyls. In lyrical and narrative 
poetry he excels ; it is only in the drama that he has failed 
to achieve success. His lyrics cover nearly the whole lyri- 
cal circuit — song, ballad, ode, and elegy. Notable among 
the ballads is The Revenge — a Ballad of the Fleet. There 
is a great range from the rapid force and fire of that no- 
ble ballad to the simple pathos of The May Queen. But 
his prevailing note is the pathetic. His narrative skill is 
variously, yet always charmingly, shown in The Princess, 
Enoch Arden, and The Idyls of the King. His observation 
of nature is profound, and accurate to the tiniest detail. It 
is chiefly in a sense of humor that Tennyson is weak ; he 
seems unable to express humor without the aid of dialect. 

Apart from the shorter pieces which first wafted Tenny- 
son into fame, his best work is probably to be seen in The 
Princess, In Memoriam, and The Idyls. In the last-named 
Tennyson followed for the most part the Morte Barthur of 
Mallory (Caxton's translation, 1485). He follows Mallory, 
and Geoffrey of Monmouth, in his conception of Arthur as 



312 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

blameless. The Idijls are essentially tales, but there is 
an ever-recurring suggestion of allegory, " shadowing sense 
at war with soul." The characters, too, personify certain 
moral qualities in action. Jealousy is delineated in Geraint, 
Endurance in Enid, Holiness or Purity in Galahad, Guilty 
Love in Lancelot, etc. The healthy moral influence of Ten- 
nyson's poetry is not its least recommendation. 

"I am going a long way 
With these thou se(5st— if indeed I go — 
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 
To the island-valley of Avilion ; 
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
Deep meadowed, happy, fair with orchard-lawns 
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." 

— Morte cV Arthur. 

"For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would 
be; 

"Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales ; 

" Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly 
dew 
From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue ; 

"Far along the world-wide whisper of the south -wind rushing 
warm. 
With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder- 
storm ; 

"Till the war -drum throbbed no longer, and the battle -flags 
were furled 
In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world. 

"There the common-sense of most shall hold a fretful realm 
in awe. 
And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law." 

— Locksley Hall. 



ALFRED LORD TENNYSON 813 

" Break, break, break, 

On thy cokl gray stones, O Sea ! 
And I would that my tongue could utter 
The thoughts that arise in me. 

"0 well for tlie fisherman's boy, 

That he shouts with liis sister at play ! 
O well for the sailor lad, 

That he sings in his boat on the bay ! 

"And the stately ships go on 

To their haven under the hill ; 
But O for the touch of a vanished hand, 
And the sound of a voice that is still ! 

"Break, break, break. 

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea ! 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me." 



"The splendor falls on castle walls 
And snowy summits old in story : 
The long light shakes across the lakes, 
And the wild cataract leaps in glory. 
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. 

" O hark, O hear ! how thin and clear, 
And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 
O sweet and far from cliff and scar 
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing ! 
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying : 
Blow, bugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying." 

— The Princess. 

"The path by which we twain did go. 
Which led by tracts that pleased us well, 
Thro' four sweet years arose and fell, 
From flower to flower, from snow to snow : 

"And we with singing cheered the way. 
And, crowned with all the season lent. 
From April on to April went, 
And glad at heart from May to May : 



314 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

"But where the path we walked began 
To slant the fifth autumnal slope, 
As we descended following Hope, 
There sat the Shadow feared of man ; 

"Who broke our fair companionship, 
And spread his mantle dark and cold, 
And wrapt thee formless in the fold, 
And dulled the murmur on thy lip, 

"And bore thee where I could not see 
Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste. 
And think, that somewhere in the waste 
The Shadow sits and waits for me." 

— In Memoriam. 



Last May we made a crown of flowers : we had a merry day ; 

Beneath the haw^thorn on the green they made me Queen of 
May ; 

And we danced about the may-pole and in the hazel copse 

Till Charles's Wain came out above the tall white chimney- 
tops. 

There's not a flower on all the hills : the frost is on the 

pane : 
I only wish to live till the snowdrops come again : 
I wish the snow would melt, and the sun come out on high : 
I long to see a flower so before the day I die. 

The building rook '11 caw from the windy tall elm- tree. 

And the tufted plover pipe along the fallow lea, 

And the swallow will come back again with summer o'er 

the wave. 
But I shall lie alone, mother, within the mouldering grave." 
— NeiD-Yeafs Em (The May Queen). 

" Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, 
Thy tribute wave deliver : 
No more by thee my steps shall be, 
Forever and forever. 

"Flow, softly flow, by lawn and lea, 
A rivulet then a river : 
Nowhere by thee my steps shall be, 
Forever and forever. 



ROBERT BROWNING 315 

"But here will sigh thine alder-tree, 
And here thine aspen shiver ; 
And here by thee will hum the bee, 
Forever and forever. 

"A thousand suns will stream on thee, 
A thousand moons will quiver ; 
But not by thee my steps shall be. 
Forever and forever." 

— A FareiceU. 

Robert Browning (1812-1889), if he be not the most orig- 
inal, is at least one of the most peculiar, and — it must be 
added — the most unintelligible to ordinary readers, of the 
poets of the current century. He was born at Camberwell, 
London, and educated at London University. He was an au- 
thor at twenty-one, but his first notable poem, Paracelsus, 
was published when he was two years older. Though in 
several ways a remarkably puzzling production, it gave un- 
doubted proof of great poetical and intellectual ability in one 
so young. It is mainly a psychological study, and proved, 
in its subtle analyses of motives, impulses, and influences, an 
anticipation of much of the author's subsequent work. Straf- 
ford, an historical drama, was Browning's next effort. He 
wrote some eight or ten dramas or dramatic sketches in all, 
none of them — chiefly for lack of incident — successful on 
the stage, though A Blot on the ^Scutcheon, in 1843, ran for 
several nights, and attracted some attention. 

Browning, though never popular, was an indefatigable 
writer, who bore the neglect of his countrymen with serene 
good-liumor, and persisted in the choice of recondite sub- 
jects, an eccentric method of treatment, a style of versifica- 
tion generally harsh and abrupt, and a style of language now 
pedantic and now familiar, and frequently obscure. His 
rhymes, too, are often hudibrastic, without being effective. 
His philosophical reasonings, and even his narratives, are 
difiicult to follow ; the reader rises from several perusals 
with only a vague idea of the author's plan or meaning. One 
who runs cannot read Browning ; he demands the study of 
a specialist. Yet specialists assure us that if he is difficult 



31 G THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

to understand, the delight of understanding him is ample 
compensation for all the toil which the difficulties he inter- 
poses entail, and that he is inferior only to Shakespeare in 
the richness, subtlety, and suggestiveness of his thought. 
That he could be intelligible and forcible on a first reading 
when he chose is well proved by such pieces as The Pied 
Piper, Herve Riel, Hoio they Brought the Good Neivs from 
Ghent to Aix, etc. 

His principal works (besides those already mentioned) 
were published in the following order: Sordello in 1840, 
Pipim Passes in 1841, Christmas Eve and Easter Day in 
1850, Men and Women in 1855, The Ring and the Book in 
1868, Balaustion's Adventure in 1871, Fifine at the Fair in 
1872, Red -cotton Night-cap Country in 1873, Jocoseria in 
1883, Ferishtah''s Fancies in 1884, and Asolando a few days 
before his death at Venice in December, 1889. This is by 
no means an exhaustive list of his numerous works. Brown- 
ing lived and studied much in Italy ; he went to that coun- 
try first in 1841 ; made it his home (at Florence), after his 
marriage in 1846 with the poetess Elizabeth Barrett, for fif- 
teen years ; and found there the themes for most of his best 
poetry. 

The chief feature of his verse is a rugged dramatic 
strength, arising mainly from a habit of condensed expres- 
sion, in which rapid and often recondite or technical allusion 
is blended with quaint imagery. He is a picturesque rather 
than a melodious poet. He is most powerful in the realiza- 
tion of character, into which he had great analytical insight 
— more especially if the character was abnormal or placed in 
unusual circumstances. His range is over an infinite variety 
of such characters and incidents, but his treatment of the 
subject is deep and passionate rather than wide and genial. 
The great object of his poetry seems to have been to exhibit 
the mystery of human nature, and set forth daily duty as the 
end of life. His religious views are those of the orthodox 
Christian. Browning lacks dignity and repose, and is sadly 
wanting in melody. 

Pippa Passes is the rather fanciful title of a dramatic poem 



ROBERT BROWNING 317 

(one of a series entitled Bells and Pomegranates, 1841-1844), 
which recounts the one-holiday adventures of an Italian 
girl, Philippa, a silk -factory operative, wlio, passing typical 
characters in the drama at critical points in their history, 
unconsciously to herself produces a determining influence 
on their respective fates. The Ping and the Book, common- 
ly regarded as Browning's most elaborate masterpiece, is a 
detailed narrative in ten versions of what cannot be other- 
wise described than a vulgar murder case, according as it 
came under the notice of different witnesses, or was present- 
ed to the minds of different judges. 2'he book is the record 
of the case, which the poet found on a stall in Florence, and 
the ring signifies the various testimonies or views of the 
case — truth mixed with alloy. Probably Men and Women is 
the best understood and most admired of his more serious 
works, but his popularity, as distinct from his fame — so far 
as he is popular — rests upon the ballads which describe the 
midnight gallop of the three couriers, the exploit of the 
imaginary Breton sailor, and the magical effects of a mys- 
terious pipe played through the streets of Hamelin. 

" Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the northwest died away ; 

Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay ; 

Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay ; 

In the dimmest northeast distance dawned Gibraltar grand 
and gray ; 

' Here and here did England help me : how can I help Eng- 
land V — say 

Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and 
pray. 

While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa." 

— Home Thoughts from Sea. 

" We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 

Lived in his niikl and magnificent eye. 
Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 

Made him our pattern to live or to die ! 
Shakespeare w\as of us, Milton was for us. 

Burns, Shelle}^ were with us — they watch from their graves! 
He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 

He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves ! . . , 



318 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Life's night begius : let him never come back to us ! 

Tliere would be doubt, hesitation, and pain. 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of twilight, 

Never glad confident morniag again !" 

— Tlie Lost Leader. 



Oh to be in England now that April's there ! 

And whoever wakes in England sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest bouglis and the brushwood sheaf 

Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf. 

While the chaffinch sings in the orchard bough, 

In England now ! 

And after April, when May follows 

And the white-throat builds, and all the swallows ! 

Hark ! Where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge 

Leans lo the field, and scatters on the clover 

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's edge — 

That's the wise thrush ! he sings each song twice over 

Lest you should think he never could recapture 

The first fine careless rapture !" 

— Home Thougliis from Abroad. 

" Before living he'd learn how to live — 

No end to learning : 
Earn the means first— God surely will contrive 

Use for our earning. 
Others mistrust, and say ' But time escapes ! 

Live now or never !' 
He said ' What's time ? Leave Now for dogs and apes ! 

Man has Forever !' . . . 
Was it not great ? did not he tlirow on God 

(He loves the burthen !) 
God's task to make the heavenly period 

Perfect the earthen ? . . , 
That low man seeks a little thing to do, 

Sees it and does it; 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one ; 

His hundred's soon hit : 
This high man, aiming at a million. 

Misses a unit. 
That has the world here ; should he need the next, 

Let the world mind him: 



OTHER POETS 319 

This, throws himself on God, and unperplexed 
Seeking shall find him." 

— A Grammarian's Funeral. 

'At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun, 
And against him the cattle stood black every one, 
To stare thro' the mist at us galloping past, 
And I saw my stout galloper Roland at last, 
With resolute shoulders, each butting away 
The haze, as some bluff river headland its spray." 
— How They Brought the Good Neics from Ghent to Aix, 



OTHER POETS 

The son of a banker, and himself the wealthy partner in a Lon- 
don bank, Samuel Rogers (1763-1855) was born in one of the suburbs 
of the great city, and easily survived to the ninety -third year of 
a life that had been surrounded by every comfort and refinement. 
His recipe for a long age was "temperance, the bath, and don't 
fret." No more generous or genial patron of art than Rogers ever 
existed. For more than half a century his breakfast table, during 
the London season, was the gathering-place of men of talent and 
genius. The host himself was a brilliant talker, and a shrewd and 
experienced critic. He was eminently a man of taste. He had 
published so early as his twenty-fifth year a small volume of verse, 
but it was not till 1793 that he became known as a poet. In that 
year appeared The Pleasures of Memory, a poem in the heroic 
couplet, the title of which had been suggested by Akenside's Pleas- 
ures of Imagination, published about half a century before. Rog- 
ers's is the more pleasing poem. His genius was happy in the 
subject ; and the subject is one which gives delight to every 
reader. The feelings are lightly stirred ; a pensive placidity 
pervades the poem. It is thus, for example, he recalls school- 
boyhood : 

" The school's lone porch, with reverend mosses gray, 
Just tells the pensive pilgrim where it lay. 
Mute is the bell that rung at peep of dawn. 
Quick 3ning my truant feet across the lawn: 
Unheard the shout that rent the noontide air 
When the slow dial gave a pause to care. 
Up springs, at every step, to claim a tear, 
Some little friendship formed and cherished here ; 
And not the lightest leaf but trembling teems 
With golden visions and romantic dreams." 



320 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Other poems by Rogers include Columbus (1813), Human Life 
(1819), and notably Italy, a poem descriptive of Italian scenes 
and incidents, in easy, graceful blank-verse, the first part of which 
appeared in 1822. It is in his Italy that Rogers tells the well- 
known story of Ginevra : 

"If thou shouldst ever come by choice or chance 

To Modena, 

Stop at a palace near the Reggio-gate, 
Dwelt in of old by one of the Orsini :" 

and his relation of the affecting incident is a characteristic speci- 
men of the classical refinement and graceful beauty of his style. 
The poetry of Rogers, like that of Keats, remained uninfluenced 
by the feelings which the French Revolution stirred so powerfully 
in most of their contemporaries. He is a straggler from the 
eighteenth century. 

The most popular Scottish poet after Burns, James Hogg (1770- 
1835) was born in a shepherd's hut in Selkirkshire, and, becoming 
a shepherd himself in his native district, was and is familiarly 
known as The Ettrick Shepherd. With little or no aid from art 
or education, the soul of poetry, which Nature had lodged within 
him, was developed by local scenery and folk-lore. 

"When darkness fell, 
And gray -haired sires the tale would tell ; 
When doors were barred, and eldern dame 
Plied at her task beside the flame, 
That thro' the smoke and gloom alone 
On dim and umbered faces shone ; 
The bleat of mountain goat on high. 
That from the clilf came quavering by ; 
The echoing rock, the rushing flood, 
The cataract's swell, the moaning wood, 
The undefined and mingled hum 
(Voice of the Desert, never dumb !) — 
All these have left within this heart 
A feeling tongue can ne'er impart." 

Encouraged to express this "feeling" by the friendship and ex- 
ample of Scott, to whom he was of some service in collecting ma- 
terial for The Border Minstrelsy, Hogg issued various volumes of 
verse, but had hardly attained to more than local fame until he 
published IVie Queen's Wake in 1813. This poem is a series of 
ballads and metrical tales supposed to have been recited at a com- 
petition of Scottish bards before Queen Mary and her court at 



OTHER POETS 321 

Ilolyrood. It is Hogg's best work, affording full scope for the 
display of his delicate fancy, weird imagination, and grotesque 
humor. Equally impressive, each in its own way, though the 
ways are wide asunder as the poles, are the ballad of The Witch of 
Fife with its humorous diablerie, and the fairy tale of Bonny Kil- 
memj. Kilmeny is a lovely dream of a pure and beautiful maiden 
carried away into fairy-laud for seven long years. 

"When many a day had come and fled, 
When grief grew calm and hope was dead, 
Wlien mass for Kilmeny's soul had been sung, 
When the beadsman had prayed, and the dead-bell rung, 
Late, late in a gloamin,^ when all was still, ^evening twilight 
When the fringe was red on the westlin hill, 
The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane. 
The reek o' the cot hung o'er the plain ^ jy itself alone 

Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane,^ ^chimney-fire 
When the ingle ^ lowed'* with an eerie leara,^ ^flamed 
Late, late in the gloamin, Kilmeny cam' hame!" ^lonely light 

Hogg was an industrious writer of both prose and verse. Be- 
sides The Queen's Wake he produced Moclor of the Moor, The Pil- 
grims of the Sun, Queen Hynde, etc., but especially some charming 
lyrics of which the address To the Skylark {''BiYdi of the Wil- 
derness "), the love-pastoral When the Eye Comes Hame, and the 
martial strain of Gam" Ye by Atholl will serve as specimens. The 
Brownie of Bodsbeck is perhaps his most notable effort in prose. 

The most copious writer of the century, not even Scott or Leigh 
Hunt excepted, was Robert Southey (1774-1843). He was the son 
of a Bristol linen-draper, and was educated at Westminster and 
Oxford. Like his friend Coleridge, he early felt the influence of 
the French Revolution. He became, while still a minor, a Uni- 
tarian in religion and a republican in politics, wrote Wat Tyler, 
and cherished a vain dream of regenerating society by instituting 
in America a scheme of government where all should be equal. 
To the scheme he and his friends gave the name of Pantisocracy. 
The restless and revolutionary youth developed into a Conserva- 
tive politician and staid man of letters. At the age of twenty- 
nine he settled with his wife, one of the three Miss Frickers, at 
Greta Hall, near Keswick, drawn to the Lake District by the resi- 
dence there of his friends Wordsworth and Coleridge. Greta Hall 
was his home for the rest of his life. Before settling in the north 
country, he had paid two visits to Portugal ; kept terms at Gray's 
Inn with the view of qualifying for a government post by legal 
training; and published Joan of Arc, an historical epic, and Thalaba 

21 



a22 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

tlie Destroyer, an Arabian tale in verse of a peculiar measure. At 
Greta Hall he lived in his library, and worked with systematic 
regularity. 

"My days among the dead are past ; 
Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 

The mighty minds of old : 
My never-failing friends are they 
With whom I converse night and day." 

Every hour was accounted for on the time-table of his daily life : 
"Three pages of history after breakfast ; . . . then to transcribe or 
copy for the press, or to make any selections or biographies, or 
what else suits my humor, till dinner-time. From dinner-time 
till tea I read, write letters, see the newspaper, and very often in- 
dulge in a siesta. After tea I go to poetry, and correct and re- 
write and copy till I am tired, and then turn to anything else till 
supper. And this is my life." He received the laureateship in 
1813 on the suggestion of Scott, to whom the honor had been 
offered, and was twice pensioned by government, on the last oc- 
casion (in 1835) with £300 a year. Southey broke down under 
the continuous strain of hard work, and for the last three years of 
his life his mind was vacant. The most of his work, and his best 
work, was done at Greta Hall. It included Madoc, The Curse of 
Kehama, and — best of the three because of its human interest — 
Roderick the Last of the Goths — skilfully constructed epics, but too 
learned and too foreign to be popular. His best prose work is 
The Life of Nelson, written in singularly lucid and graceful Eng- 
lish, the happy expansion of an article in the Quarterly. It is by 
this classic biography that Southey's name will live. He wrote 
also The Doctor, Colloquies, and a Life of John Wesley: Some of 
Southey's shorter poems, mostly written in his youth, such as 
Lord William, The Well of St. Keyne, The Lnchcape Bock, etc., were 
at one time much in vogue. 

Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864), the son of a medical practi- 
tioner at Warwick, was educated at Rugby and Oxford, but, in- 
flamed by the revolutionary ideas of the time, broke away, like 
Shelley, from parental control, and lived an irregular life in Wales 
on an allowance of £140 a year. He sought solace in the study of 
nature, the Latin classics, and English literature, Milton being his 
favorite author. It was in Wales he made the acquaintance of 
Lord Aylmer. For the whole of his long life he was the slave of 
his own impulsive, fiery, fretful spirit. On the death of his moth- 
er, a wealthy Warwickshire heiress, he succeeded to property of 
the value of £80,000, and had squandered it before his death on 



OTHER POETS 323 

objects mostly Utopian or unworthy. Nature designed him for an 
active life, but her intentions were thwarted by his own undis- 
ciplined will. For a short time (1808) lie served as volunteer on 
the side of the Spanish patriots in the Peninsular War. In 1815 
he was domiciled at Florence. His poetical work includes Gehir, 
a kind of epic (published in 1798), of which he also produced a 
Latin version ; Count Julian, a tragedy written in poetical sym- 
pathy with Southey, whose Roderick the Last of the Oaths deals 
with the same theme ; and numerous short pieces, chiefly lyrical, 
and attractive by the classical beauty of their form, many of which 
appeared in two miscellaneous collections of prose and verse, The 
Last Fruit Off an Old Tree (1853) and Dry Sticks Fagotted (1858). 
Landor's genius is most fully set forth in his Lmaginarg Conversa- 
tions (1824-1846) — prose dialogues, one hundred and twenty-five 
in number, on all manner of subjects, between famous historical 
characters ; they are written in vigorous, compact English, and 
the sentiment is consistent with the characters selected. Excellent 
specimens of Landor's charm of sentiment and style will be found 
in the lines to the Sister of Elia, and the short lyrics Rose Aylmer 
and the Power of Verse ; the haunting melody of Rose Aylmer is 
unmatched. 

"Past ruined Ilion Helen lives, 
Alcestis rises from the shades: 
Verse calls them forth ; 'tis verse that gives 
Immortal youth to mortal maids. 

" Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil 
Hide all the peopled hills you see, 
The gay, the proud ; while lover's hail 
These many summers you and me." 



*'Ah what avails the sceptred race, 

Ah what the form divine ! 
What every virtue, every grace ! 

Rose Aylmer, all were thine. 
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes 

May weep, but never see, 
A night of memories and of sighs 

I consecrate to thee." 

The youngest of ten children born to a Glasgow merchant, 
Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) was educated at the university of his 
native city, where he gained some distinction for his knowledge 
of Greek literature ; and, after acting for a time as tutor among 



324 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

the wilds of Argyleshire, came to Edinburgh to study law. The 
Pleasures of Hope proved a more pleasing study ; and on the pub- 
lication of his poem on that subject, Campbell found himself fa- 
mous at twenty-two, and was readily diverted to literature. Visit- 
ing the Continent in 1800, he saw several scenes of actual vf arfare, 
which roused his martial instincts, and are reflected in such heroic 
strains as Ilohenlinden, Ye Mariners of England, LochieVs Warn- 
ing, and The Battle of the Baltic. One effect of his patriotic lyrics, 
which are the most magnificent in English literature, was to pop- 
ularize the navy beyond precedent; and doubtless a share of the 
triumph at Trafalgar, which he celebrated, is due to Campbell. 
They brought him in 1806 the reward of a government pension of 
£200. In 1803 Campbell had gone to London, and there the great- 
er portion of his time was taken up in lecturing, reviewing, edit- 
ing, and compiling. Original work had to take a subordinate 
place. He wrote, however, Gertrude of Wyoming (1809), a Penn- 
sylvanian tale in the Spenserian measure ; and Theodric (1824), a 
domestic tale in rhyming pentameters, like The Pleasures of Hojie. 
They are not unworthy of his genius, whose gentler side they il- 
lustrate. Several shorter pieces of various quality, such as Lord 
Ullin's Daughter, The Exile of Erin, The Soldier's Dream, The Last 
Man, Beullura, and Lines on Leaving a Scene in Bavaria, are, with 
his matchless war lyrics, likeliest to support his fame. Campbell 
had a fine ear for melody, and in diction shows as finished an art 
as that of Pope or Gray. His descriptions of war and storm are 
sublime ; genuine pathos was at his command ; and his scenes of 
domestic peace and love, heightened by romantic feeling, are often 
extremely beautiful. 

"The spirits of your fathers 
Shall start from every wave!— 
For the deck it was their field of fame, 
And ocean was their grave. 
Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell 
Your manly hearts shall glow, 
As ye sweep through the deep 
While the stormy winds do blow, 
While the battle rages loud and long, 
And the stormy winds do blow. 

"Britannia needs no bulwarks. 
No towers along the steep: 
Her march is o'er the mountain waves, 
Her home is on the deep. 
With thunders from her native oak 
She quells the floods below, — 



OTHER POETS 325 

As they roar on the shore 
When the stormy winds do blow, 
While the battle rages loud and long, 
And the stormy winds do blow." 

— Ye 3Iariiiers of England. 

"Adieu the woods, and waters' side, 
Imperial Danube's rich domain ! 

Adieu the grotto, wild and wide. 
The rocks abrupt, and grassy plain! 
For pallid Autumn once again 

Hath swelled each torrent of the hill ; 
Her clouds collect, her shadows sail. 
And watery winds that sweep the vale 

Grow loud and louder still. 

"But not the storm, detbroning fast 

Yon monarch oak of massy pile, 
Nor river roaring to the blast 

Around its dark and desert isle ; 

Nor church-bell tolling to beguile 
The cloud-born thunder passing by, 

Can sound in discord to my soul ; 

Roll on, ye mighty waters, roll! 
And rage, thou darkened sky !" 

— On Leaving a Scene in Bavaria. 

Thomas Moore (1779-1853), the son of a Catholic tradesman— a 
licensed grocer — of Dublin, was educated at Dublin University, 
and made some name for himself as a translator of Anacreon, and 
a student of French, Italian, and music, before his arrival in Lon- 
don at the age of twenty to study for the legal profession. In 
1803, having previously published some erotic effusions over the 
punning signature of Thomas Little, he was appointed to a post 
in the public service — that of Admiralty Registrar at Bermuda ; 
but after a disappointing visit to the island, he left the duties of 
the office to a deputy, and returned to England to publish his 
Odes and Epistles. His deputy, fifteen years later, by an act of 
embezzlement involved the poet in serious pecuniary loss. The 
Odes were severely handled by Jeffrey, and a duel between the 
irate author and the critic furnished Byron with a theme for ban- 
ter and mirth. Moore next wrote clever biting satires. The Tioo- 
penny Post-hag, etc. , in the interest of the Whig party, and found 
a congenial subject for his most pointed invective in the Prince of 
Wales. In 1817 appeared his longest and most elaborate effort. 



326 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Lalla BooTch, an Oriental romance, partly prose and partly verse, 
brilliantly rhetorical, but nothing beyond that. Another ambi- 
tious composition of Moore's was The Loves of the Angels ; but his 
fame rests upon his Irish Melodies, begun in 1807 and continued 
at intervals till 1834. His style in these truly melodious lyrics 
is light and graceful, and they have sometimes the further recom- 
mendation of genuine pathos and romantic sentiment. Moore's 
patriotism was sincere, and was stirred from his infancy by Irish 
faith in the French Revolution. Among his intimate friends were 
Lord Byron, whose Life he wrote, and Lord John Russell, who 
wrote his. From 1835 he was in receipt of a government pension 
of £300. Light-hearted and genial, Moore in private life was yet 
a warm and faithful friend, and though vain, was free from jeal- 
ousy. Most popular among his Melodies are The Last Rose of 
Summer, The Meeting of tie Waters, Love's Young Dream, Lesbia, 
and the lines in defence of the mi iguided patriot Robert Emmet. 

"With thee were the dreams of my earliest love, 
Every thought of my reason was thine ; 
In my last humble prayer to the Spirit above. 

Thy name shall be mingled with mine. 
Oh blest are the lovers and friends who shall live 

The days of thy glory to see. 
But the next dearest blessing that Heaven can give 
Is the pride of thus dying for thee!" 

— When he who adores thee. 

Thomas Hood (1799-1845), the son of a London bookseller who 
had been born in Dundee, is chiefly remembered as the most in- 
genious of poetical punsters. He was, however, not less pathetic 
than he was undeniably witty, and in his Plea of the Midsummer 
Fairies gave proof of much imaginative power mingled with deli- 
cate fancy. He suffered from chronic ill-health. At first he was 
an engraver, but by the time he was twenty-three had fairly com- 
mitted his talents to literature. He was successively editor of the 
New Monthly Magazine and Hood's Own. He first made his mark 
(1826) with a very popular collection of Whims and Oddities in 
prose and verse. Of his serious short pieces the best are Tlie 
Bridge of Sighs, The Dream of Eugene Aram, The Deathbed, and 
the very powerful and pathetic Song of the Shirt, the last contrib- 
uted to Punch just the year before his death ; it is a poem which 
pleads the cause of the overworked seamstress, and reveals the 
miseries of what has come to be called " sweating." If he devel- 
oped the witty vein of his genius more fully than the pathetic, it 
was because he found wit a surer, or at least a shorter, road to 



OTHER POETS 327 

popularity. He was latterly the recipient of a small and much- 
needed pension. 

"We watched her breathing through the night, 
Her breathing soft and low, 
As in her breast the wave of life 
kept heaving to and fro. 

"So silently we seemed to speak, 
So slowly moved about, 
As we had lent her half our powers 
To eke her living out. 

"Our very hopes belied our fears. 
Our fears our hopes belied ; 
We thought her dying when she slept, 
And sleeping when she died. 

" For when the morn came, dim and sad. 
And chill with early showers, 
Her quiet eyelids closed : she had 
Another morn than ours." 

—The Deathbed. 

Elizabeth Barrett, Mrs. Browning (1806-1861), was born in the 
county of Durham, spent her early years near Ledbury, in Here- 
fordshire, and began to write verses in her childhood. At the age 
of twenty-four she came before the public with a metrical trans- 
lation of tlie Greek tragedy Prometheus Bound. A few years af- 
terwards illness and the sudden death of a beloved brother im- 
pelled her to a life of the utmost seclusion, and in a darkened 
chamber, shutting herself out from the world, she read " every 
book worth reading in almost every language," and wrote with a 
devotion that made poetry her regular work. Several volumes of 
verse were the outcome of all this study. In 1846 she was married 
to the poet Robert Browning, with whom she went to live in 
Italy. In 1850 appeared her Sonnets, passionate almost as those of 
Shakespeare, and occasionally equal in poetical structure to those 
of Wordsworth, or even Milton; they purported to be "from the 
Portuguese." In the following year, having witnessed from the 
windows of her house in Florence certain incidents connected with 
the Italian revolutionary outbreak of 1848, she published her im- 
pressions and feelings of the same under the title of Casa Guidi 
Windows. Her greatest work, certainly her largest, Aurora Leigh, 
a poem in blank-verse, descriptive, like Wordsworth's Prelude, of 



328 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

the growth of a poetical mind, was issued in 1856, With marxy 
picturesque and some melodious lines, it contains much unpoetical 
and even uninteresting matter, harshly versified. Her sonnets 
and lyrics are the best efforts of a mind truly poetical, but often 
diffuse and undisciplined in its expression. If she had written 
less, and with more restraint, she would have written with more 
permanent power; as it is, she probably deserves the honor of be- 
ing the first among English poetesses. Her most effective pieces 
must include The Rhyme of the Duchess May, the pathetic Cry of 
the Children, and the tenderly sympathetic lines entitled Coicper's 
Grave. 

"O Poets! from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless 

singing ; 

O Christians ! at your cross of hope, a hopeless hand was 

clinging ; 

O Men ! this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling, 
Groaned inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye 

were smiling. . , . 

"Wild timid hares were drawn from woods to share his home 
caresses, 
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses. 
The very world, by God's constraint, from falsehood's ways re- 
moving, 
Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving." 

— Cowpefs Grave. 

William Edmondstoune Aytoun (1813-1865), born in Edinburgh, 
the son of a Writer to the Signet, was educated at Edinburgh 
University, where, under his future father-in-law, John Wilson 
(better known as Christopher North), he first distinguished him- 
self in poetical composition by winning a prize for a poem on 
Judith. He was bred for the Scottish bar, and at the age of thirty- 
two was appointed Professor of English Literature in Edinburgh 
University, He also held the sheriffship of Orkney. In 1848 he 
published his chief work, the Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, a sub- 
ject suggested to him by Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Borne, which 
had appeared seven years previously. They are a series of bal- 
lads mostly written in a martial key, but with touches of tender 
pathos, on subjects connected with Scottish history ranging from the 
time of the Bruce to the last Jacobite rebellion. Other works by 
Aytoun include the satirical, spasmodic tragedy Firmilian, Both- 
toell, and, in collaboration with Theodore Martin, the Bon Gaultier 
Ballads, a series of clever burlesques and parodies. His style 
is well exemplified in Edinhurgh after Flodden, the Execution of 



OTHER POETS 329 

Montrose, and the Burial- March of Dundee. The last of these lays 
concludes thus : 

"Open wide the vaults of Atbol, 

Where the bones of heroes rest ; 
Open wide the hallowed portals 

To receive another guest ! 
Last of Scots, and last of freemen, 

Last of all that dauntless race 
Who would rather die unsullied 

Than outlive the land's disgrace ! 
O thou lion-hearted warrior. 

Reck not of the after-time : 
Honor may be deemed dishonor, 

Loyalty be called a crime. 
Sleep in peace with kindred ashes 

Of the noble and the true, 
Hands that never failed their country. 

Hearts that never baseness knew. 
Sleep ! and till the latest trumpet 

Wakes the dead from earth and sea, 
Scotland shall not boast a braver 

Chieftain than our own Dundee !" 

More famous in his lifetime as a critic with a strong bent to 
theological subjects, but now chiefly regarded as one of the most 
thoughtful and manly of the poets of his century, Matthew Arnold 
(1822-1888), the eldest son of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, was born at 
Laleham, in Middlesex, and educated at Rugby and Oxford, win- 
ning at the university, in 1843, the Newdigate prize by a poem on 
Cromwell. In his twenty-ninth year he was appointed an inspec- 
tor of schools ; but had previously come before the public with 
The Strayed Beveller, and Other Poems. This volume was followed 
at intervals by Einpedocles on Etna, and other books of verse ; and 
a series of prose essays on Criticism, the Study of Celtic Literature 
— probably his best effort in prose — Culture and Anarchy, Litera- 
ture and Dogma, etc. In 1857 he was appointed to the chair of 
Poetry at Oxford, and shortly thereafter published his classical 
tragedy of Merope. Of his narrative poems the most powerful is 
the tragic story, in blank-verse, of Sohrah and Rustum, an episode 
in Persian history of a father's deadly encounter with his son ; 
and next to it is the lyrico-dranuitic narrative, in rhymed verse of 
various measure, of the loves of Tristram and Iseult — an ancient 
British legend of the age of Arthur. Some strong sonnets of a 
Wordsworthian cast, and an elegy, entitled Thyrsis, in commemo- 



330 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

ration of his friend and fellow-poet Arthur Clough, are among the 
finest things of Arnold's poetical work, all of which is informed 
with a noble if somewhat austere spirit, expressing itself with 
classical grace, and with a suggestive compactness of thought and 
a restrained tenderness of feeling singularly charming to a culti- 
vated mind. Matthew Arnold has not yet received his full meed 
of praise. 

"One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee, 
One lesson which in every wind is blown, 
One lesson of two duties kept at one 
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity — 
Of toil unsevered from tranquillity ! 
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows 
Far noisier schemes, accomplished in repose, 
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry. 
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, 
Man's senseless uproar mingling with his toil, 
Still do thy quiet ministers move on, 
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting; 
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil ; 
Laborers that shall not fail, when man is gone." 

— Quiet Work. 

POETS OF LESS NOTE 

Still other poets belonging to this period include the following: 

William Lisle Bowles, an English clergyman who wrote sonnets, 
of a meditative strain, that had some influence on the poetical 
genius of Coleridge ; his versification is remarkable for correctness 
and refinement of expression. 

Joanna Baillie, daughter of a Scottish clergyman, wrote verses — 
some of them in the vernacular of the Lowlands — and poetical 
dramas (on the Passions) that would not act, but that were much 
admired by Walter Scott ; her best tragedies are De MontfoH, 
Count Basil, and The Family Legend. 

Robert Bloomfield, at one time a working shoemaker in London, 
wrote The Farmer's Boy, a descriptive poem of rural life, very 
smoothly versified, 

Carolina Oliphant (Baroness Nairne), daughter of the Laird of 
Gask, in Stratliearn, wrote some sweet and very popular Scottish 
lyrics, such as 21ie Land d the Leal, The Auld House, The Rowan- 
Tree; her character sketch of The Laird d" Cockpen reveals the 
humorous side of her generally plaintive muse. 

James Montgomery, a native of Ayrshire, and long editor of a 
newspaper in Sheffield, was author of The Wanderer of Switzerland, 



POETS OF LESS NOTE 33I 

The WoiM Before the Flood and The Pelican Island ; he is better 
known for bis short pieces, such as The Common Lot, Asjnrations 
of Toath, etc. 

Henry Francis Gary, a clergyman and distinguished scholar of 
Oxford, translated the Bimna Commedia of Dante into blank- 
verse. 

Robert Tannahill, a Paisley weaver, wrote some charming Scot- 
tish lyrics, such as Gloomy Winter's Noo Atoa', The Floicer o' Bun- 
blane, Kelvin Grove, etc., slill very popular in his native country. 

Ebenezer Elliott, a Yorkshire iron - worker, at one time well 
known as "The Corn-law Rhymer," wrote sympathetically and 
with manly feeling on the lives of the poor ; his Corn-law Rhymes 
came out between 1830 and 1836. 

Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, author of the Oxford prize- 
poem on Palestine, wrote sacred pieces, of which the missionary 
hymn From Greenland's Icy Mountains is the best known. 

Henry Kirke "White, a native of Nottingham, and a youth of 
much promise, whose life was shortened by over-application to 
study at Cambridge, wrote some verses, all produced before he 
was twenty, of which The Christiad is his most ambitious at- 
tempt. 

Allan Cunningham, born in Dumfriesshire and bred a mason, 
was employed in the studio of Chan trey, the sculptor, and wrote 
some lyrics, many of them in the antique Scottish strain, of which 
the exiled Jacobite's longing for llame, and the sea-song begin- 
ning "A wet sheet and a flowing sea," are good examples ; he 
was an indefatigable writer of both prose and verse, his most pop- 
ular prose work being Lives of Eminent British Painters, etc. 

John Keble, an English clergyman of great piety and learning, 
and a leader in the Tractarian movement at Oxford, wrote a pop- 
ular volume of sacred poetry entitled The Christian Year, and 
was afterwards appointed to the chair of Poetry at Oxford. 

Sir John Bowring, a noted linguist and traveller, born at Exeter, 
gave specimens of Russian, Servian, and Magyar poetry trans- 
lated into English verse. 

Felicia Browne (Mrs. Hemans), daughter of a Liverpool merchant, 
unhappily married to Captain Hemans, wrote many popular and 
melodious verses wiiich appeal rather to the heart than the intel- 
lect ; The Forest Sanctuary and Songs of the Affections are the 
titles of her best volumes ; but she is chiefly known as the au- 
thoress of such pieces as The Graves of a Household, The Homes 
of England, The Voice of Spring, and various short poems on the 
sea. 

John Clare, a Northamptonshire peasant, wrote, with singular 
taste and delicacy of expression, of rural life and scenery; after a 



332 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

youth of toil and noble self-denial, Clare found influential friends, 
and took to farming, but squandered his means, and, sinking into 
despondency, at last died in an asylum. 

Hartley Coleridge, son of the well-known poet, had something of 
his father's genius, and a full share also of his father's irresolute 
will ; he wrote some exquisite sonnets and other verse, and a prose 
work entitled Lives of Northern Worthies. 

Robert Poilok, a young Scottish licentiate of the Secession Church, 
wrote a long and somewhat gloomy religious poem in blank-verse, 
which he called The Course of Time. 

Winthrop Mackworth Praed, an accomplished scholar, barrister, 
and M.P., was the author of some graceful and brilliant poetical 
pieces, of which The Bed Fisherman is one of the longest and 
best. 

Thomas Aird, a native of Roxburghshire, and long editor of a 
Dumfriesshire newspaper, wrote, besides numerous verses de- 
scriptive of Scottish character and scenery, a wildly imaginative 
poem entitled The DeviVs Dream on Mount Aksbeck. 

Kichard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton, poet, politician, and 
traveller, published various books of graceful and thoughtful 
verse, including Poems for the People and Legendary and Histori- 
cal Poems. 

Francis Mahony ("Father Prout "), a Jesuit priest, celebrated for 
his wit, eccentricity of conduct, and classical scholarship ; latterly 
correspondent of English newspapers at Rome and Paris ; worthy 
of mention here if only for The Shandon Bells, and his rhymed 
Latin versions of some of Moore's Irish Melodies. 

Arthur Hugh Clough, son of a Liverpool merchant, was the 
friend and fellow-pupil at Rugby of Matthew Arnold, and wrote 
in classical hexameter The Bothie of Toher-na-Vuolich, "a long- 
vacation pastoral "; he was also the author of Dipsychus and Mari 
Magno. 

Dante Gabriel Eossetti, born in Loui^on, the son of a Professor of 
Italian in King's College, was a painter and poet of the pre- 
Raphaelite school. 

Alexander Smith, born at Kilmarnock, for some time pattern- 
designer in a Glasgow factory, afterwards appointed secretary 
to the University of Edinburgh, wrote A Life Drama and City 
Poems, which show an exuberant fancy and a picturesque style ; 
his prose includes A Summer in Skye, and a domestic novel, part- 
ly autobiographical, entitled Alfred Hagarfs Household. 

Charles Stuart Calverley, a scholarly verse-writer and clever paro- 
dist, wrote Fly-Leaves, and a small collection of translations. 

Edward Robert Lytton (Lord Lytton), who w^'ote at first under the 
pen-name of "Owen Meredith," published various volumes of 



POETS OF LESS NOTE 333 

verse, of which Glytemnestra, Orval or The Fool of Time, and Olen- 
averil may be mentioned ; the verse is often arlificial and the sen- 
timent false or strained ; he was the son of the novelist, and was 
Viceroy of India from 1876. 

David Gray, the son of a weaver at Merkland, near Kirkintilloch, 
was entering on a literary career in London when he was cut off 
by consumption in his twenty-third year ; he left The Luggie and 
Other Poems to attest the genuineness of his inspiration, 

James Thomson ("B.V."), a writer of undoubted power, the son 
of a Port - Glasgow sailor, wrote The City of Dreadful Night, a 
work of gloomy imagination and despair; he died neglected in 
1882 after an eventful life, during which he had been an army 
school-master, a war correspondent, etc. 

Roden Noel, a genuine poet of great promise, author of A Mod- 
ern Faust, died 1894. 

PMlip Bourke Marston, (1850-1887), blind from his infancy, au- 
thor of All in All, and Wind Voices. 

Of living poets, and aspirants to the name of poet, the number 
is legion. The best, or at least the best known, include the fol- 
lowing : 

Philip James Bailey, who published, in 1839, Festus, once greatly 
admired, now forgotten. 

Sir Theodore Martin, who translated Goelhe, Horace, Catullus, 
Heine, etc., into English verse. 

Frederick Locker (-Lampson), author of London Lijrics (1857), a 
brilliant writer of vers de societe. 

Coventry Patmore, author of The Angel in the House. 

Gerald Massey, author of The Ballad of Babe Ghristabel. 

Jean Ingelow, who has written lyrics and ballads, A Story of 
Boom, and other poems. 

Sir Edwin Arnold, born 1832; at one time Principal of the San- 
skrit College at Poona ; author of The Light of Asia (1879). 

William Morris, born near London in 1834, educated at Oxford, 
and now carrying on business in London as a decorative artist ; 
author of narrative poems, mostly in the Chaucerian manner and 
metre, of which The Defence of Guenevere (1858), The Life and 
Death of Jason (1867), and The Earthly Paradise (1868-1870)— a 
cycle of twenty-four Greek and mediaeval stories — are among the 
most perfect, picturesque, and flowing verse of the Victorian Age: 
translator also of the ^neid (1876) and The Odyssey (1887), and 
some heroic Icelandic sagas such as The Story of Sigurd. 

Lewis Morris, born at Carmarthen in 1835, a barrister, author of 
Songs of Two Worlds (1872-1875), Epic of Hades (1876), and A Vi- 
sion of Saints (1890). 



334 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Alfred Austin, bora near Leeds in 1835, a barrister, author of Tlie 
Human Tragedy (1862-1876), At the Gate of the Convent (1885). 

Theodore Watts, born at St. Ives in 1836, author of some fine 
sonnets and other uncollected poems ; one of the finest critics of 
our time. 

Algernon Charles Swinburne, born 1837, in London, son of Admi- 
ral Swinburne, educated in France and at Eton and Oxford, author 
of Atalanta in Calydon {18Q4:) , C-hastelard (1865), Songs Before Sini- 
rise (1871), BotJiicell (1874), 3Iari/ Stuart (1881), Tristram of Lyon- 
esse (1882), and various volumes of poems and ballads, exhibiting 
a marvellous mastery of melodious and energetic English, a vo- 
luptuous imagination, and a passionate sense of beauty and sensu- 
ous delight; author also of powerful critical essays in impassioned 
prose on Chapman, Blake, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Landor, and 
Ben Jonson. 

Henry Austin Dobson, born at Plymouth in 1840, a clerk in the 
Civil Service, author of various volumes of light and graceful 
verse (not unmingled with serious thought poetically expressed), 
such as Vignettes in Rhyme, Proverbs in Porcelain, At the Sign of 
the Lyre (1885), etc. 

Robert Buchanan, born in Warwickshire in 1841, and educated 
at Glasgow, friend and fellow- student of David Gray, author of 
Undertones (1863), Idyls of Inverhurn (1865), London Poems, Napo- 
leon Fallen, etc. ; his best novel, God and the Man; his most popu- 
lar play, SojMa (1886)— adapted from 2'om Jones. 

Andrew Lang, boin at Selkirk in 1844, educated at St. Andrews 
and Oxford, author of Ballades in Blue China (1880), Grass of Par- 
nassus (1888) — graceful, melodious, often tiioughtful verse ; trans- 
lator of the Odyssey (in collaboration with Professor Butcher, of 
Edinburgh), Theocritus, and seven books of tlie Iliad; an accom- 
plished scholar, critic, and journalist of the light and humorous 
kind, author of Custom and Myth (1884) and Letters to Dead Authors 
(1886). 

Robert Louis Stevenson, born 1850 and educated at Edinburgh, 
author of A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), Underwoods (partly in 
the Scottish language). Ballads (1890) ; better known by his prose 
stories, written in a singularly expressive style. Treasure Island, 
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Kidnapped (1886)— continued in Catriona 
(1893)— and The Master of Ballantrae (1889). 

This list might include other names, otherwise distinguished, 
and in no wise inferior in verse to several of those already men- 
tioned, more especially William Ernest Henley, Rudyard Kipling, 
and George Mereditli ; also Wilfrid Blunt, William Watson, Rich- 
ard Le Gallienne, Norman Gale, A. Mary F. Robinson, etc. 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF AMERICAN POETS 335 



A Chronological List of American Poets of the Period 

Fitz-Greene Halleck (1790-1867), born in Guildford, Connecticut; 
inspired to some of his best efforts by a visit to the old country ; 
best known for his poem on Marco Bozzaris, the Greek patriot who 
fell at the moment of victory fighting against the Turks (1823). 

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878), a native of Massachusetts; 
wrote verses when only thirteen ; best known for his address To a 
WaterfoiDl, and Thaiiato^jsis — the latter a solemn theme sublimely 
treated in blank- verse. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), a native of Boston, where for 
a few years in his early manhood he was a Unitarian minister ; re- 
tired to Concord and abandoned himself to philosophical specula- 
tion, becoming the master thinker — the Carlyle — of America ; lect- 
ured occasionally, and wrote continuously, mainly in prose {The 
Method of Nature, Society and Solitude, and numerous other sug- 
gestive and inspiring essays — literary, biographical, philosophical, 
and moral) ; but also in verse, of which Wood-Notes and the poem 
on May Day are characteristic specimens. 

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806-1867), author of much prose and 
a few books of verse ; his poem on The Leper and his prose Peii- 
cilUngs by the Way are good examples of his style. 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), who has given more 
people a taste for poetry, and purified and comforted more young 
minds than any poet of modern times, was born at Portland, 
Maine, and educated at Bowdoin College, where he was after- 
wards appointed Professor of Modern Languages. In 1834 he was 
promoted to Harvard, where he remained twenty years, resigning 
his chair to Lowell in 1854. He travelled much in Europe, famil- 
iarizing his mind with the literatures of Spain, France, Italy, Ger- 
many, Denmark, etc. Longfellow showed great taste both in his 
subjects and his treatment of them ; simplicity, clearness, grace, 
and melody are characteristics of his style. He has written volu- 
minously, but always to sympathetic readers. Among his poeti- 
cal works may be mentioned Voices of the Night, Evangeline (in 
hexameter verse), The Seaside and the Fireside, The Golden Le- 
gend, Hiawatha (in unrhymed trochaic tetrameter), The Courtship of 
Miles Standish, Tales of a Wayside Lnn, The Divine Tragedy, as well 
as Poems on Slavery and numerous translations. He has also writ- 
ten a play, The Spanish Student, and a few volumes of graceful 
prose, such as Outre Mer and Katanagh. 

John Greenleaf Whittier (1808-1892), a native of Massachusetts, 
and a member of the Society of Friends ; at first a farm-worker 
and a shoemaker, afterwards a newspaper editor ; wrote and 



336 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

worked vigorously for the suppression of slavery; author oi Mogg 
Megone, Voices of Freedom, The Tent on the Beach, Snoio-Bound, and 
many other volumes and fugitive pieces ; strength and delicacy of 
feeling, manliness of thought, and occasionally great lyrical grace 
and melody of diction (as in Sunset on the Bearcamp, My Play- 
mate, etc.), f^i'e marked features of his poetry; on the whole, one 
of America's greatest poets, inspired by a passion for nature and 
for freedom. 

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), horn at Boston, the son of strolling 
actors, and maintained and educated by a Virginian planter named 
Allan, whose name he added to his own ; impulsive and uncontrol- 
lable, he died miserably in a Baltimore hospital, after a dissipated 
and wandering life ; author of many weirdly fascinating but mor- 
bid tales in prose, and some poems of singular imaginative beauty 
and peculiarly suggestive melody ; of his poems may be mentioned 
The Baven, The Bells, The Haunted Palace, Annahel Lee, To One in 
Paradise, etc. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes, born at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 
1809 ; appointed Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Har- 
vard in 1847 ; best known as an essayist, and the author of The 
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (published in 1858) ; the writer also 
of many light, graceful, and liumorous or fanciful poems on vari- 
ous subjects, and a few novels, of which Elsie Venner is perhaps 
the best. 

James Russell Lowell (1819-1892), born at Cambridge, Massachu- 
setts ; professor at Harvard in succession to Longfellow ; author 
of various books of poetry, of w^hich the most popular is entitled 
The Biglow Pa2)ers (1848), a series of humorous satires in the Yan- 
kee dialect ; wrote also 3Iy Study Windoics, and other volumes of 
delightful prose essays ; Lowell was latterly the American am- 
bassador to England. 

Walt Whitman (1819-1892), born at West Hills, in Long Island, 
New York ; the most original and national of American poets ; 
originator of a unique style, which is neither prose nor verse, yet 
is not wanting in a wild kind of rhythm, and is often highly po- 
etical ; author of Leaves of Grass (1855) and Drum-Taps (1865); 
Wliitman followed many occupations — printer, teacher, journal- 
ist, carpenter, etc. ; his devotion during the Civil War to the sick 
and wounded of both armies is beyond praise. 

Francis Bret Harte, born at Albany, New York, in 1837, a hu- 
morist in both prose and verse ; author of The Luck of Boaring 
Camp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, and many other sketches of the 
life and scenery of the Far AVest ; of his short poems the best 
known are The Heathen Chinee and Dickens in Camp. 

Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Edmund Clarence Stedman, James 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 337 

Bayard Taylor (a great traveller), Joaquin — more correctly Cin- 
einnatus H. — Miller (a Californian), Charles G. Leland ("Hans 
Breitman "), John James Piatt, James W. Riley, together with 
Lucy Larcom, Celia Thaxter, Emily Chubbuck Judsou ("Fanny 
Forrester "), and Sarah Plait, are also names of more or less note 
■which have reached the other side of the Atlantic to find admirers. 



WRITERS OF FICTION 

The life and poetry of Sir Walter Scott (born 1771, cre- 
ated a baronet 1819, died 1832) have already been consid- 
ered (p. 277). It only remains to give a connected view of 
his prose fictions. Great as Scott is as a poet, he is greater 
as a novelist. But it is a double mistake to suppose that 
when Scott turned to prose he abandoned poetry, for he still 
went on writing verse, and his prose is poetical. It was after 
tbe Waverley series had begun that The Lord of the Isles and 
Harold the Dauntless appeared, and some of Scott's finest 
lyrics and lyrical fragments were written for, and are scat- 
tered over, his prose romances. 

It was in 1814, when Scott was forty-three, that the his- 
torical romance of Waverley, or ' Tis Sixty Years Since, was 
first given to the public. If he was late in beginning, he 
lost no time when he began, and he needed no apprentice- 
ship. His genius for fiction was fully matured from the first. 
Waverley was like the discovery of a gold-mine — .not only to 
the reading public, whom it enraptured, but to Scott him- 
self, who was now at last aware of his own vast resources. So 
early as 1805, before even The Lay was published, he had 
thought of trying his hand at prose fiction, and had actually 
written seven of the opening chapters of Waverley. The 
MS. got mislaid for eight years, and it was the accidental 
discovery of it among some fishing-tackle in an old mahog- 
any cabinet that reawakened in 1813 his former desire to try 
his fortune in prose. The desire returned upon him with all 
the stronger force that he felt his popularity as a metrical 
romancist on the wane ; Byron was the new light in the sky 
to which all eyes were turned. Miss Edgeworth's success in 

the portrayal of Irish character and the description of Irish 
22 



338 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

scenery was also an inducement to Scott to take up the 
trade of a story-teller with Scotland and Scotsmen for his 
theme. His best novels are on Scottish subjects, such as 
The Antiquary^ or The Heart of Mid-Lothian ; but his best 
romance is Ivanhoe. 

The period of his productivity in fiction is from 1814 to 
1831 — the year preceding his death. In 1832 he had lost 
even the power of holding his pen. In those seventeen years 
he sent forth twenty-nine works of fiction, of which Roh 
Roy, The Heart of Mid-Lothian, The Bride of Lammermoor, 
and Ivanhoe — all masterpieces of a varied art — came out in 
three successive years — 1817, 1818, and 1819 respectively. 
In 1819 he also published A Legend of Montrose. 1816, 
1819, and 1823 were his most productive years, each yield- 
ing a triple crop. The authorship, for Waverley was an 
anonymous publication, was long kept a secret, but leaked 
out some years before its public disclosure by Scott in 1827. 
The series was so rapid and brilliant that many thought the 
fictions were produced by a club of writers. They are main- 
ly historical romances, dealing with the personages and 
events of Scottish and English history. The periods select- 
ed are the times of the Third Crusade, the Reign of Kobert 
III., the Scottish Reformation, Puritan Rule, the Restora- 
tion, the Persecutions in Scotland, and the Porteous Riots 
in Edinburgh. One romance is based on French history 
of the time of Louis XI. Equally powerful are Scott's novels 
of Scottish life and character. Here is the record of the en- 
tire series, according to Lockhart : 

rUBLISnKD IN 

Waverley 1814 

Guy Manucving 1815 

The Antiquary, The Black Dwarf, and Old Mor- 
tality 1816 

Rob Roy 1817 

The Heart of Mid-Lothian 1818 

The Bride of Lammermoor, A Legend of Mon- 
trose, and Ivanhoe 1819 

The Monastery, and The Abbot 1820 

Kenilworlh, and The Pirate 1821 

The Fortunes of Ni^el . . . . 1822 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 339 

Peveril of the Peak, Queutin Diirward, and St. 

Ronan's Well 1833 

Rcdgauntlet 1824 

The Betrothed, and The Talisman 1825 

Woodstock 1826 

The Two Drovers, The Highland Widow, and The 

Surgeon's Daughter 1827 

The Fair Maid of Perth 1828 

Anne of Geierstein 1829 

Count Robert of Paris, and Castle Dangerous . . 1831 



In addition, as worthy of special notice, Scott published, 
"between 1827 and 1830, a History of Scotland under the 
title of Tales of a Grandfather. 

In these immortal fictions Scott has not only set in vivid 
presentation before us great personages and incidents of his- 
tory ; he has, besides, created a whole world of imaginary 
characters and scenes. At the mere mention of the Waver- 
ley Novels there rises before us a crowd of figures and faces 
of all kinds, unknown to history, yet forever familiarized to 
our imagination. In the crowd we readily discern Jonathan 
Oldbuck and Edie Ochiltree, Dirk Hatteraick and Dominie 
Sampson, the Master of Ravenswood and Lucy Ashton, Flora 
Maclvor and the Baron of Bradwardine, Rebecca and the 
Templar, Jeanie Deans and Madge Wildfire; Sergeant Both- 
well, and Cuddie Headrigg and his mother Mause ; Magnus 
Troil, and Claud Halcro, and Noma of the Fitful-Head ; the 
household of the Mucklebackits, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, Dugald 
Dalgetty, the Dougal Creature, Caleb Balderstone, Counsel- 
lor Pleydell, Meg Merrilies the gypsy, Richie Moniplies, An- 
drew Fairservice, and Nanty Ewart, skipper of The Jump- 
ing Jenny. 

Scott's views of life and nature are objective ; they are 
primarily presented to the eye. But such is the force of his 
humanity, his humor, his sympathy, and his poetry in their 
presentation that they at once take the imagination and 
reach the heart. His plots are often imperfectly construct- 
ed, and his language usually flows with careless ease. The 
great merit of the style is that it does not distract the reader 



340 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

by calling attention to peculiarities. It is a transparent ine- 
diura through wliicli we see, undazzled by stained - glass 
splendors, the pomp and glory of chivalry, and all the varied 
bustle and glow of life in its native hoes. Powerfully vivid 
in his characterization, Scott is often superb in his descrip- 
tions. When the subject is a great one, he never disap- 
points. He rises with majestic ease to the " height of his 
great argument." He has exercised an immense influence 
upon literature, both here and in France. It may safely be 
said that if the Waverley Novels had not been written, the 
romantic histories of Alexandre Dumas would never have 
appeared. 

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), the only 
child of Richmond Thackeray and his wife Anne Beecher, was 
born at Calcutta, where his father filled an important post in 
the service of the East India Company. The family to which 
he belonged came originally from Yorkshire. His father 
dying and his mother marrying again, Thackeray, then a 
small boy of five, was sent to England to the care of an aunt, 
and used to recall a glimpse he had on the voyage home of 
the exiled Napoleon at St. Helena. At the age of eleven he 
was placed at the Charterhouse, where he remained for the 
next six years. Neither here, nor at Cambridge, whither he 
proceeded in 1829, did he care to earn distinction as a 
scholar ; nor was he a leader in the sports and games of 
boyhood ; yet he was popular among his school-fellows for a 
certain talent he had already begun to show in the composi- 
tion of clever satirical verses. It was in a school fight at the 
Charterhouse that his nose was disfigured. Thackeray was 
two years at Trinity College, and left without a degree, but 
with a reputation for smart writing, acquired by a burlesque 
of young Tennyson's prize-poem, and various contributions 
to a local weekly called The Snoh. 

The next two years he spent in travel, chiefly in Germany, 
where he saw Goethe ; and on his return to London thought 
of entering the legal profession. His patrimony then was 
worth about £500 a year, but the failure of an Indian bank 



WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 



341 



greatly reduced it, and he was under the necessity of choos- 
ing a profession which would be immediately remunerative. 
He accordingly chose journalism, and figured for a short 
time in 1833 as contributing editor, and latterly proprietor, 
of The National Standard. It was an unfortunate begin- 
ning, for the journal collapsed in little more than a year, 
and he was left a poor man. Thackeray now thought of be- 
ing an artist ; he had always been fond of drawing, and had 
no mean skill in caricature (" I think I can draw better than 
do anything else, and certainly I should like it better than 
any other occupation "). Accordingly he went to Paris, 
and devoted every hour of the day to hard work at the ate- 
lier. It was in 1836 that he first met Dickens, and offered 
to illustrate Pickwick (" I recollect walking up to his cham- 
bers in Furnival's Inn with two or three drawings in my hand, 
which, strange to say ! he did not find suitable "). 

The necessity of making a livelihood for himself and his 
wife — he had married Isabella Shawe in 1836 — drove 
Thackeray back to literature, and he may be said to have 
made his debut in Fraser^s Magazine with the Yellowplush 
Papers. Under the pseudonym of Michael Angelo Titmarsh 
he wrote to this periodical, a few years later, the best of his 
minor works — The Great Hoggarty Diamond and Barry 
Lyndon. He was also a regular contributor to \\\q Times., 
and joined the staff of Punch in 1840. His connection with 
the great comic paper lasted thirteen years, and among his 
associates were Douglas Jerrold, Mark Lemon, and John 
Leech. Perhaps his best work in Punch was The Snob Pa- 
pers and Jeames\s Diary, in which the vulgarity and mean- 
ness of much that passes for good society were exposed with 
mingled severity and humor. The great calamity of his 
domestic history happened some time after 1840, when his 
wife's mind became hopelessly affected. 

It was early in 1847, when he was in his thirty-seventh 
year, that Thackeray's masterpiece. Vanity Pair, began to 
appear in monthly numbers. He was not yet popular, and 
the numbers of Vanity Pair were well advanced before his 
name began to spread among the people ; so little success- 



342 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

fill, indeed, was the serial at first, that it was subject of 
consideration at one time whether it should not be stopped. 
But his Christmas book of that year, Mrs. Perkins's Ball^ 
happened to take the popular fancy, and immediately there- 
after there was such a rush of subscribers to Vanity Fair 
that Thackeray became at once famous. He lost no time in 
following up the success of his first novel with The History 
of Arthur Pendennis (1848-1850), and then he came forward 
as a public lecturer on the English humorists of the eigh- 
teenth century. He redelivered those lectures in America. 
Both at home and abroad they were read by himself to 
crowded audiences, and added immensely more to his gains 
than writing had ever done. He lectured in 1856 on the 
Four Georges in the same way, and with even more pecuni- 
ary profit. Meanwhile his permanent fame as a novelist was 
still growing, by the publication (1852) of his brilliant his- 
torical story Henry Esmond^ to which The Virginians (1857) 
is a sequel. But between these The Newcomes was publish- 
ed (in 1853-1855). In 1855 Thackeray was in Rome, where 
he contracted a fever which weakened his constitution. 
From the ill effects of that fever he ever afterwards suffered. 

The record of the remainder of his life is brief. In 1857 
he attempted to enter Parliament as a Radical, but was cast 
by Oxford city, which he sought to represent. In 1860 he 
started The Cornhill Magazine^ which he edited with phe- 
nomenal success for about two years ; he withdrew from the 
management only because he found it hard to return unsuit- 
able contributions. For Cornhill he wrote The Adventures 
of Philip on his Way through the World, and Roundabout 
Papers, the latter a series of graceful essays on many sub- 
jects ; and had got well begun with a novel of equal brill- 
iancy to Vanity Fair, when he was suddenly struck down 
on the morning of Christmas Eve, 1863. 

The first charm of Thackeray is his style. It is clear, 
idiomatic, and incisive ; conveys much meaning in few 
words ; and is generally controlled by the most perfect 
taste. His power as a novelist is most manifest in the de- 
lineation of character. Like his master Fielding, he portrays 



CUAllLES DICKENS 



343 



human nature exactly as he found it, but his views of life 
were directed rather to the weakness and selfishness than to 
the nobler qualities of humanity. His clever, intellectual 
people are for the most part rogues and sharpers, while he 
accredits the nobler qualities of the heart, simplicity, sym- 
pathy, and sincerity to the young, the inexperienced, and 
even the stupid. There is much satire, chiefly of the iron- 
ical kind, in his delineations of life, into which there is too 
frequently infused, especially in his earlier novels, a bitter 
cynicism. There is no hearty laughter in his pages, such as 
one finds in Dickens ; and his pathos, while it purifies the 
heart, can hardly be said, like that of Dickens, to refresh it. 
He drew his characters mainly from fashionable society ; it 
was in the world of the West End of London that he found 
Vanity Fair fully displayed. The most original of his char- 
acters include Becky Sharp and Amelia Sedley, Rawdon 
Crawley and his brother Pitt, Colonel Newcome and Major 
Pendennis, Harry Foker, Laura, George Warrington, and 
Barry Lyndon. Thackeray wrote some clever verse, of which 
The Mahogany Tree and The Ballad of Bouillabaisse are 
characteristic specimens. 

With not more natural ability than Thackeray, with much 
fewer advantages of social position and education, but with 
earlier experience of life, and presumably truer, certainly 
more genial, knowledge of human nature, Charles Dicksns 
(1812-1870) found his way to the heart of the nation a good 
dozen of years in advance of his great contemporary and ri- 
val. Pickwick^ which made him famous, appeared when he 
was only twenty-four ; it was not till he was thirty-seven 
that Vanity Fair established the reputation of Thackeray. 

Dickens was born at Landport, in Hampshire, the second 
of a family of eight children. His father, John Dickens, was 
then a clerk in the Navy Pay Department at Portsmouth. In 
his fourth year his parents, after some preliminary wander- 
ings, settled at Chatham, and there young Dickens spent five 
happy years, a lonely and rather delicate boy, finding amuse- 
ment enough among the wonders of Kentish lanes and com- 



344 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

panionsliip enongli among the books of his father's small 
library. Smollett, and Defoe, and Goldsmith were his first 
favorites. But in his tenth year all at once the aspect of 
the world changed to him. His parents, who seem to have 
been a fond but thriftless pair of Micawbers, had removed 
to London, where his father was arrested for debt, and put 
into the Marshalsea. His mother tried to maintain the family 
by pawning the books and articles of furniture. They suf- 
fered much hardship, and it seemed necessary that as far as 
it was possible the children should maintain themselves. 
Accordingly young Dickens was sent to assist in a blacking 
manufactory, at an engagement of six shillings weekly for 
his services. The degradation and misery he felt at this em- 
ployment, which continued for about two years, entered his 
very soul. He has described this sad experience of his 
childhood very pathetically in David Coijper field. 

At last something did turn up to the family's advantage, 
in the shape of a legacy ; the father left the Marshalsea, and 
the son the blacking manufactory ; the boy, still only twelve 
years of age, was put to school, and, without being taught, 
managed to gather by desultory reading a great deal of va- 
ried information. He left school in his fifteenth year, and 
for a short time served as office-boy to an attorney's firm. It 
was now that he began to mark out a course of life for him- 
self. It was his ambition to be — what his father now was 
— a reporter ; accordingly he learned to write short-hand, and 
by-and-by, having received an appointment as parliamentary 
reporter for the Morning Chronicle., he acquired the name of 
the quickest and most accurate writer in the gallery of the 
House of Commons. His task of reporting political speeches 
was mostly a night one, and he utilized his vacant forenoons 
by rambles in London, in gratification of his intense interest 
in the many forms and phases of city life. At last he took 
to describing what he saw, and the now famous Sketches by 
Boz began to appear in the Evening Chronicle and The Old 
Monthly Magazine. He was now earning seven guineas a 
week. In 1836 the Sketches were published in book-form, 
and then Dickens, glowing with hope, and encouraged by a 



CHARLES DICKENS 345 

prospect of success, boldly struck into The Pickwick Pa- 
pers. 

Pickwick, illustrated with comic cuts by Hablot Browne 
("Phiz"), was an immediate and an assured success. It 
was at once followed by Oliver Tioist, which appeared in 
Bentleifs Miscellany, the editorship of which Dickens had 
undertaken. Next came Nicholas Nicklehy, and, under the 
fanciful general title of Master Humphreifs Clock, The Old 
Curiosity Shop, containing the pathetic history of Little 
Nell, and Barnahy Budge, Dickens's historical novel, deal- 
ing successfully with the times of the Gordon Riots. Dick- 
ens now visited Scotland, and was publicly feted at Edin- 
burgh. Thereafter he proceeded to America (1842), and 
on his return produced Martin Chuzzlewit, which, as it 
dealt severely with certain traits of the American character, 
raised on the far side of the Atlantic quite an outcry against 
the author. It was now he began his famous Christmas an- 
nuals, three of which were especially popular, through their 
mingled tenderness and humor — A Christmas Carol (1843), 
The Chimes (1844), and The Cricket on the Hearth (1845). 
In 1846 he visited Italy, and in the same year edited, for a 
few months only, as he found the work irksome, The Daily 
News. Domhey and Son was his next volume ; and then (in 
1848) he began what is generally allowed to be his master- 
piece — the story, largely autobiographical, of David Coi^per- 
field, containing the fine portrait of Agnes, the best of all his 
female delineations. Of this novel he wrote, " Like many 
fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favorite child ; 
and his name is David Copperfield." Bleak House followed 
in 1852. He was now editor of Household Words, for which 
he wrote Hard Times. He stopped Household Words, and 
started in its place All the Year Roimd, a periodical of 
which he was sole proprietor, and for which he wrote A 
Tale of Two Cities— ?i story of the French Revolution— and 
Great Expectations. But before this he had issued Little 
Dorrit. In 1867 he paid his second visit to America, where 
as a reader of his own works he was enthusiastically re- 
ceived. He had previously read in England and Scotland, 



346 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

and had developed a remarkable power of dramatic repre- 
sentation. His readings brought him enormous sums of 
money, but the fatigue attending them, both physical and 
mental, greatly overtaxed his strength. His latest works 
were Our Mutual Friend and The Mystery of Edwin Drood 
— the last unfinished. He died, like Thackeray, of effusion 
of blood on the brain, brought on by overwork. The sad 
and unexpected event happened in his own house at Gad's 
Hill, Rochester, in the beginning of June, 1870. He was 
buried in Westminster Abbey. 

Dickens's ordinary style is that of the journalist, free, 
easy, and copious, with no attempt at fine v/riting, and few 
traces of culture. He wrote for the masses, and not for 
scholars. Yet his language, always expressive, sometimes 
rose to heights of commanding power — as in his descrip- 
tion of the wind's vagaries in the opening chapter of Mar- 
tin Chuzzleiuit, and in Tom Pinch's ride in the stage-coach 
to London in the same novel. 

It must be owned that there is a stronger tendency to 
accentuate his characters and his situations than serious art 
allows. His excess of emphasis is sometimes caricature. 
Yet the great triumph remains to him that his characters 
live. They are as individual and as vividly presented as we 
find real personages in actual life. They are as varied as 
they are vivid, and their number is not easily told. Among 
them are Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, Pecksniff and Tom 
Pinch, the Cheeryble Brothers, Mark Tapley, Dick Swiv- 
eller. Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger, Fagin and Quilp, 
Squeers, Sarah Gamp, Uncle Dick, Agnes, Little Nell, Mr. 
Micawber, and little Paul Dombey. 

The great feature of his genius is its geniality. A ten- 
der sympathy with the oppressed, especially the young and 
the weak, and a love of pure innocent fun — such uproar- 
ious fun as had not been expressed in fiction since the time 
of Smollett — are other distinguishing qualities of Dickens 
as a writer. His novels are often of that class known as 
" novels with a purpose." The evils of cheap Yorkshire 
schools, for example, are exposed in JSficholas NicMehy, of 



OTHER NOVELISTS 347 

the Debtors' Prison in Little Dorrit, of the law's delay in 
Bleak House. He was largely successful in attaining his 
purpose ; he did more, it has been truly said, to ameliorate 
the condition of the poor man than was ever achieved by 
statesman. 

OTHER NOVELISTS 

Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield (1804-1881), was the grand- 
son of a Jewish trader who left Venice, where the Disraelis had 
been long established, and settled in Loudon some time about the 
middle of the eighteenth century. His father, Isaac D'Israeli, 
author of Curiosities of Literature, was the first of the family to 
develop a taste for letters ; and " Disraeli the Younger," as Lord 
Beaconsfiekl in liis youth desired to be called, took after his fa- 
ther in preferring literature to trade. It was a choice he could 
hardly avoid making. He was born in his father's house in Lon- 
don, and, as he himself tells us, was bred in his father's library. 
He was educated privately ; and at the age of thirteen was bap- 
tized a Christian. 

At seventeen he was articled to a firm of attorneys, and began 
to keep terms at Lincoln's Inn in 1824. But literature had a 
greater attraction for him than the study of law, and so early as 
1826 he startled the town with Vidaii Grey. The brilliancy of the 
style, the self-confidence of the author, and the audacity of his 
thinly- veiled satire made this book the talk of fashionable Lon- 
don. Acquaintance with the personality of the writer only in- 
creased the interest of society in him. In appearance, manners, 
dress, he was like nobody else : " Ringlets of silken black hair; 
flashing black eyes; an effeminate and lisping voice; his dress- 
coat of black velvet lined with white satin ; white kid gloves, with 
his wrist surrounded by a long hanging fringe of black silk ; and 
an ivory cane, the handle inlaid with gold, and adorned with a 
black silk tassel." To this description add "a lividly white face" 
and handsome, scornful features, and one may form some idea 
of Disraeli the Younger in the hour of his first triumph. A 
fop among fops, he had yet the effrontery to fire off a satirical 
squib at the artificialities of social and political life; this was The 
Voyage of Captain Popaiiilla (1828), written in imitation of Swift's 
Gulliur. 

Disraeli now set out on his travels, and visited Spain, Italy, and 
Turkey; he ascended the Nile, paced the streets of Jerusalem, 
mused in the cedar shade of Lebanon. He was absent a year. 
The finest descriptions of his later romances were the recollection 
of those wanderings and meditations. On his return he produced 



348 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

(1832) Contarini Fleming, and followed It up with The Wondrous 
Tale of Alroy. Meanwhile he had planned his ambitious Mevolu- 
tionary Epick, of which he published an instalment of three books 
in 1834 ; but verse was not his province, and he abandoned the 
subject. He went back to the novel, and between 1837 and 1847 
produced his four best romances — the sweetly-told love-story of 
Henrietta Temple ; Coningshy, notable for a skilfully constructed 
plot and clever delineation of character ; Sybil, scarcely less de- 
serving than Coningsby ; and Tancred, with its Asian mystery and 
sublimely wild romancing and grand descriptions of Eastern sce- 
nery. Coningshy and Sybil are a recast, in fictional form, of the 
political ideas contained in his Vindication of the British Consti- 
tution, a pamphlet which he had flung off in 1835. Just before 
publishing Tancred he sent out his most brilliant political bur- 
lesque, Ixion ill Heaven; followed by The Infernal Marriage, only 
less brilliant. In the former Byron figures divertingly as Apollo, 
and George IV. is made to pose as Jupiter. 

But now the game and business of politics claimed the best en- 
ergies of Disraeli. He had entered Parliament in 1837 as member 
for Maidstone. Ten years later he first represented Buckingham- 
shire; and from that year (1847) he took farewell of fiction for 
nearly a quarter of a century. His political career was a rapid 
succession of triumphs. He became the leader of the Protec- 
tionists ; he reconstructed the Tory party ; he was Chancellor of 
the Exchequer in 1852, again in 1858, and again in 1866. He was 
the hero of the Reform 13111 of 1867. In 1868 he was prime min- 
ister of England, thus attaining at the age of sixty-four, and 
within twenty -one years of his first appearance in the House 
of Commons, the summit of political ambition. He was again 
premier in 1874. Two years afterwards he was created Earl of 
Beaconsfield. Of all the many honors with which his career as a 
statesman was marked, none gave him more gratification than 
having the queen as his guest at Hughenden. To him the words 
of Tennyson apply with peculiar fitness: he broke " the invid- 
ious bar of birth," he " breasted the blows of circumstance," he 
lived 

. . . "to clutch the golden keys. 
To mould a mighty State's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of a throne," 

During all the turmoil of his political life he never quite aban- 
doned literature. His most effective speeches were literary, and 
he had an original knack of phrase-making. Many of his phrases 
are still current in our political speech. But he was also for sev- 
eral years the ruling spirit of The Press newspaper, and a contrib- 



OTHER NOVELISTS 349 

utor to its lively and satirical columns. And in 1870 be reap- 
peared among the novelists with the once famous, now almost for- 
gotten, Lothair. It was the fame of the statesman that secured for 
this book its unbounded but transient popularity. It was fol- 
lowed ten years later by Endymion, dull only when compared with 
the creations of his earlier genius. 

As a politician his enemies, especially at the beginning of his 
career, accused him of unscrupulousness, insincerity, inordinate 
vanity, and a craving for merely personal distinction and notori- 
ety; this evil reputation still "lives in brass." That he had, at 
least latterly, the honor and welfare of England at heart, few can 
truly doubt. He had the tact of a great party leader, and pos- 
sessed the happy secret of converting foes into friends when he 
bent his mind to the task. 

His novels foster a heroic spirit, noble sentiment, and moral 
purity. Sympathy with young ambition is felt on every page. 
It was for the young he chiefly wrote, and he taught them to wor- 
sliip noble ideals, to cherish a wise self-confidence, and to carry 
their convictions bravely into action. His chief deficiencies are 
in humor and pathos. 

Edward Lytton Bulwer, Lord Lytton (1805-1873), was the third of 
the three sons of General Bulwer, of Haydon Hall, Norfolk. He 
was carefully brought up from his infancy by his widowed 
mother, who gave him a taste for literature, and left him, when 
she died in 1843, the estates of Kneb worth and her name. He 
was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1827 he mar- 
ried an Irish lady — an unfortunate union, soon dissolved. His 
first ambition was to be a poet ; but he abandoned the idea — with- 
out, however, ceasing to write verse — and turned his energies to 
prose fiction. He was one of the most voluminous, versatile, and 
indefatigable of writers. Only a few of his best or most charac- 
teristic works can be named hero. They include Pelham, Paul 
Clifford, Eugene Aram, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Rienzi 
(1835), Ernest Maltravers (1837), The Last of the Barons (1843); 
followed by such novels of domestic English life as The Caxtons 
(1849), My Novel (1853), and What loill Re Bo loith Lt? (1858). 
Kenelm Chillingly was in MS. when he died suddenly at Torquay. 
Lord Lytton's style is highly rhetorical ; and his art, though care- 
ful and elaborate, is often stiff and mechanical. Rienzi, the Last 
of the Tribunes, is probably his best romance ; The Last of the 
Barons is an English historical romance of the times of Warwick 
the King-maker. His novels of domestic life are his best. The 
influence of Byron, Sterne, and. other writers is clearly seen in 
the works of Lord Lytton. Notice may here be taken of his two 
successful plays, TJie Lady of Lyons and Eichelieu, and of his ad- 



350 



THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 



mirable traDslation of the poems of Schiller ; his version of Hor- 
ace is less liappy. Lord Lyttoa also found time for politics, and 
filled the post of Colonial Secretary in Lord Derby's administra- 
tion of 1858 ; a peerage rewarded his services in 1866. 

Charles Reade (1814-1884), the son of an English squire, was edu- 
cated at Oxford, and called to the bar in 1843. His first con- 
nection with literature was play writing, in which he was for 
some time associated with Tom Taylor. Their best collaboration 
was Masks and Faces, produced in 1854. Reade, however, had 
begun his career as a novelist two years earlier with Peg Woffing- 
ton. This was followed next year by Christie Johnstone, the scene 
of which is laid at a fishing-village near Edinburgh. In 1857 ap- 
peared Reade's powerfully sensational novel of It is Never Too 
Late to Mend, dealing with "the horrors of the gloomy jail" and 
the excitement of Australian gold-digging. The Cloister and the 
Hearth, in 1861, is undoubtedly his best fiction ; it is a richly re- 
alistic story of mediaeval life and manners of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. Griffith Gaunt, in 1866 ; Put Yourself in His Place, in 1870; 
and The Wandering Heir, in 1875, are among his later works. 
Reade is a strong writer with a vigorous style, into which a pe- 
culiar tang of individuality is at times infused. He has been 
called the Rupert of fiction. 

Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) first came before the public as the 
joint author with her two younger sisters, Emily and Anne, of a 
volume of poems which failed to draw attention. The little book 
purported to be the composition of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell — 
assumed names which only preserved their initials and gave no 
suggestion of their sex. They were the daughters of a poor Irish 
clergyman, who had married a Cornish wife, and lived in the 
bleak village of Haworth, on a gloomy Yorkshire moor. The 
poverty and eccentricity of their father combined to give them a 
Spartan upbringing. Their humble ambition was to eke out their 
father's small income by teaching or by literature. But it was 
not till Charlotte was thirty-one years of age that the publication 
of her sensational novel of Ja?ie Eyre excited public curiosity — 
for the authorship was kept a secret. It was a great and im- 
mediate success ; and was followed by Shirley in 1849, and ViUette 
in 1853. In 1854 Charlotte Bronte was married to her father's 
curate, Mr. Nicholls. She died in the following year. Ja7ie Eyre, 
which at times suggests comparison with Richardson's Pamela, 
is, like Shirley, a delineation of Yorkshire life ; ViUette describes 
the writer's experiences as a teacher in Brussels in 1842-1843. 
Emily Bronte, who was regarded as the genius of the family, pub- 
lished Wuthering Heights in 1847, and died a year later at the age 
of twenty-nine. 



OTHER NOVELISTS 351 

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) wrote some good verse, and several 
extremely popular novels, of which the best known are Alton 
Locke, Tailor and Poet, published in 1849; Yeast, in 1851; Hy- 
patia, in 1853 ; WeMicard Ho ! in 1855 ; and Hereward the Wake, 
in 1866. Kingsley was a native of Devonshire, educated at Cam- 
bridge, and appointed first curate and afterwards rector of Evers- 
ley, in Hampshire. He also became Canon of Westminster, and 
Professor of Modern Histoiy at Cambridge. WestiDard Ho! his 
principal work, is a tale of English life and adventure of the stir- 
ring times of Raleigh, Drake, and Hawkins. It is full of pict- 
uresque scenes, exciting incidents, and a whole world of inter- 
esting characters. Hypatia is a romance of the fifth century, 
describing the conflict of Gothic barbarism and Grecian paganism 
with Christianity. Kingsley's earlier novels deal with the sad 
social condition of the working classes in both town and country, 
and suggest such practical means for their improvement as the 
institution of co-operative societies. 

Marian Evans (Mrs. Cross), better known as George Eliot (1819- 
1880), occupies the same place in fiction as Mrs. E. B. Browning 
in poetry ; she is the first of our woman novelists. Her father, 
Robert Evans, a land agent in Warwickshire, was living at Ar- 
bury farm on the Newdigate estate at the time of her birth, but 
removed very shortly thereafter to Griff, in the same county, and 
here Miss Evans spent the first twenty-one years of her life. Like 
Mrs. Browning, she was an ardent student, well read in literature 
and philosophy, and a capable scholar in both the classical and 
modern languages. Among her early friends were Herbert Spen- 
cer, who was for some time her tutor in scientific studies, and 
George Henry Lewes, with whom she was familiarly associated 
from 1854 to 1878. In 1880 she was married to Mr. John Cross. 
Her literary life may be said to have begun with her connection 
with Tlie Westminster Revieic, but it was not till the publication 
of her Seems of Clerical Life, in Blackwood's Magazine, in 1857, 
that her powers as an -original writer were acknowledged. From 
this date the rapidity and brilliancy with which her genius devel- 
oped fairly astonished the critics. Adam Bede appeared in 1859, 
The Mill on the Floss m 1860, Silas Marner in 1861. She now 
turned from themes of English provincial life to Italian mediaeval 
history, and produced, after infinite pains — which she used to say 
"made an old woman of her" — her most artistic and perfect 
work, Romola, published in 1863. It was not, however, so popu- 
lar as her first novels, and she returned to the old themes in Felix 
Holt the Radical (186G), Middleniarch (1871), and Daniel Deronda 
(1876). Meanwhile she published some poetry of more than aver- 
age merit— TAe Spanish Gypsy (in 1868) and The Legend of Jiihal 



352 THE SIXTPI PERIOD, 1789-1894 

(in 1878). In her English novels she draws largely on her own ex- 
periences of life in the Midlands, which, both in their scenery and 
the character of their inhabitants, she knew intimately. Her own 
father is drawn in Adam Bede, and he reappears in Caleb Garth. 
The composition and coloring of Warwickshire landscape are 
everywhere in these novels. Subtle analysis of character and 
vigorously realistic descriptions of scenery are her most distin- 
guishing traits. Latterly her treatment of character was growing 
more and more psychological, and her style — which is always pure 
and masculine — more and more terse and condensed. There are 
many wise, witty, and tender sayings in her novels, expressed 
with the pith and brevity of proverbs. Her views of life, though 
not without gleams of humor, have a distinct bias to tragic pathos. 

Other novelists belonging to the period include the following: 

William Godwin, author of a powerful sensational novel. The Ad- 
ventures of Caleb Williams, written with much of the direct force 
and realism of Defoe ; Godwin may be said to have introduced the 
political novel. 

Ann Ward (Mrs. Radcliffe), authoress of The Mysteries of Udolpho, a 
romance dealing with wildly picturesque scenes and characters ; 
she is the first of the romantic school of fiction. 

Maria Edgeworth, of an Irish family, but born near Heading, in 
Berkshire, wrote Castle Bachrent, and several volumes of Poindar 
Tales, sympathetically illustrative in humor, pathos, and natural 
description of Ireland and the Irish ; she had the merit of arousing 
the emulation of Scott, whose ambition, at the commencement of 
his career as a novelist, was simply to do for his native country 
what Miss Edgeworth was doing for hers. 

Matthew Gregory Lewis, known as "Monk" Lewis, from his best 
work. The Monk, a disciple of the Romantic school, revelled in 
horrors and the wildest improbabilities. 

Jane Austen, the daughter of a Hampshire clergyman, produced 
between 1811 and 1816 her four novels. Sense and Sensibility, Pride 
and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma ; Noi^thanger Abbey ap- 
peared after her death. Miss Austen wrote in a simple, clear, and 
regular style of middle-class life, which she truthfully delineated, 
her skill being especially marked in the discrimination of character. 

John Gait, a native of Ayrshire, and an untiring writer of fic- 
tion, at his best when depicting the manners of homely Scottish 
life, wrote The Annals of the Parish, The Entail, The Provost, The 
Ayrshire Legatees, and Laicrie Todd — the last-named the story of a 
Scottish emigrant to America, told with the minute realism which 
is the principal charm of Defoe. 

Frederick Marryat, a naval captain, author of many popular sea 



OTHER NOVELISTS 



353 



stories of a rather rollicking and racy humor, wrote Jacob Faithful, 
Midshipman Easy, The King's Own, etc. 

G. P. R. James, the indefatigable author (with the aid of an 
amanuensis) of nearly two hundred vohimes, essayed to follow 
Scott into the fields of historical romance, and produced Richelieu, 
Darnley, The Gowrie Plot, etc. 

Charles James Lever, author of several Irish novels of a rather 
outrageous but amusing humor, the chief of which are The Con- 
fessions of Harry Lorrequer and Charles CMalley. 

Anthony Trollope, an extremely voluminous writer, excelling in the 
delineation of clerical life and manners, and one of the best imitators 
of Thackeray, but without Thackeray's habit of moralizing, wrote 
The Vicar of Bullhampton, Barchester Toicers, Framley Parsonage, 
The Claverings, Lindisfarn Chase, The Sacristan's Household, etc. 

Wilkie Collins, whose special forte was in construction rather 
than characterization, wrote The Woman in White, The Moonstone, 
Man and Wife, Armadale, The Law and the Lady, etc. 

Dinah Mulock (Mrs. Craik) wrote John Halifax, Gentleman, The 
Ogilvies, The Woman's Kingdom, etc. 

Of living novelists the list is beyond enumeration, but the best, 
or most popular, or most promising, include the following: 

Margaret Wilson (Mrs. Oliphant), born in Mid-Lothian, a ready and 
fluent writer, author of The Chronicles of Carlingford (including 
Salem Chapel), Phoibe Junior, etc. 

George MacDonald, born in Aberdeenshire, at his best in depicting 
humble Scottish character and local life ; author of David El ginhrod, 
Alec Forbes of Howglen, and, perhaps best of all, Robert Falconer. 

Richard Doddridge Blackmore, author of Lorna Boone, Christowell 
and Perlycross — novels of incident and adventure, the scenes of 
which are laid in Exmoor and Dartmoor. 

George Meredith, said to be the greatest — certainly the most 
versatile— of our living novelists, was somewhat late in establish- 
ing his reputation, and even yet can hardly be called popular ; he 
is the author of Rlioda Fleming, The Egoist, Diana of the Cross- 
ways, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, etc. 

James Payn, a voluminous author, has written Lost Sir Massing- 
herd. By Proxy, Beggar on Horseback, Canyon's Tear, etc. 

Mary Elizabeth Braddon, a writer of sensational novels, of which 
the chief are Lady Audley's Secret, Birds of Prey, Aurora Floyd, 
The Lovels of Arden. 

Walter Besant, author of ^^^ Sorts and Conditions of Men, Ar- 
WMrel of Lyonesse, The Bell of St. Paul's, etc. , and joint-author with 
James Rice of Ready-Money Mortiboy, The Captain of the Fleet, etc., 
novels of incident and jidventure. 

23 



354 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Thomas Hardy, a, powerful describer of local character and life, 
the sceue of which is laid in Wessex; author of The Trumpet- 
Major, Far from the Madding Groiod, Tess of the Z>' Urbemlles, Life's 
Little Ironies, etc. 

William Black, born in Glasgow, author of A Daughter of Heth, 
Princess of Thule, The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, Judith 
Shakespeare, Prince Fortunatiis, The Handsome Humes, etc. ; at 
home among the scenery and characters of the West Highlands. 

Robert Buclianan, of Scottish birth and educated in Glasgow, 
author of Ood and The Man, etc. ; better known as a poet. (See 
p. 334.) 

Alexander Allardyce, born in Aberdeenshire, author of The City 
of Sunshine, descriptive of native life in an Indian village ; and 
Balmoral, a Romance of the Queen's Country, dealing vividly with 
the events of the Fifteen. 

Robert Louis Stevenson, born in Edinburgh, author of Dr. Jehyll 
and Mr. Hyde, Treasure Island, Kidnapped, The Master of Ballan- 
trae, Catriona, etc., novels of romantic adventure with matter-of- 
fact sentiment — the style charming. (See p. 334.) 

Mary Augusta Arnold (Mrs. Humphry Ward), niece of Matthew 
Arnold, the writer of two religious novels, which had a wide cir- 
culation — Robert Elsmere and David Grieve — but not as novels. 

H. Rider Haggard, author of Allan Quatermain, King Solomon's 
Mines, She, Jess, etc., novels of romantic adventure in South Africa. 

Rudyard Kipling, author of numerous powerfully realistic 
sketches of Anglo-India life, such as Soldiers Three, Life's Handi- 
cap, Many Inventions, The Courting of Dinah Shadd, etc. 

James M. Barrie, a native of Forfarshire, author of Auld Lichi 
Idyls, A Window in Thrums, and The Little Minister, all descrip- 
tive local types of Scottish character. 

To this list might also be added such names as Mrs. Henry 
Wood, Mrs. Lynn Linton, W. E. Norris, Julian Sturgis, W. Clarke 
Russell, S. Baring-Gould, A. Conan Doyle, Annie Swan, and "the 
new Stevenson "— S. R. Crockett. 

Chronological List of American Writers of Fiction 
belonging to the period 

Washington Irving (1783-1859), author of TJie Legend of Sleepy 
Hollow. 

James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), author of many novels and 
tales of romantic adventure, among which are The Spy, The Pilot, 
The Last of the Mohicans, The Red Rover, The Water - Witch, The 
Pathfinder, The Redskins; he is most in his element on the sea and 
in the primeval forest. A thoroughly American writer. 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 355 

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), still the greatest American novel- 
ist; author of Twice-told Tales, Mosses from an Old Manse, The Scar- 
let ' Letter, The House of the Seven Gables; his best work deals with 
abnormal life in New England, and is written in a style of quaint 
simplicity, truthfulness, and beauty akin to that of Charles Lamb. 

Harriet Beecher (Mrs. Stowe), born in 1812 ; author of Uncle Tom's 
Cabin (1852), and Dred, a Tale of the Dismal Swamp, both written 
to expose the evils of negro slavery— the former an immensely 
popular book. 

Charles Farrar Browns (1833-1867), the creator of the genial show- 
man "Artemus Ward." 

Frank Stockton (born 1834). author of Rudder Grange, The Lady 
or the Tiger, etc. 

Samuel L. Clemens, " Mark Twain " (born 1835), author of Huckle- 
berry Finn, but better known as a somewhat labored humorist. 

Francis Bret Hart (born 1837), author of The Luck of Roaring 
Gamp, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, The Iliad of Sandy Bar, and 
other tales dealing with life among the miners of Mexico and 
the Rocky Mountains. 

William Dean Howells (born 1837), author of A Foregone Conclu- 
sion; like Henry James (born 1843)— author of Daisy Miller, etc.— 
a skilful analyst of character ; Howells is also the author of The 
Lady of the Aroostook, Their Wedding Journey, A Hazard of New 
Fortunes, April Hopes, The Shadow of a Dream, etc., and is more 
American, and less cosmopolitan, than James. 

F. Marion Crawford (born 1845), author of A Roman Singer, Mr. 
Lsaacs, Saracinesca, etc. 

Joel Chandler Harris (born 1848), the discoverer of "Uncle Re- 
mus," the negro J]]sop. 

Frances Hodgson Burnett (born 1849), author of Little Lord Faunt- 
leroy and T'lat Lass o' Lowrie's. 

ESSAYISTS AND CRITICS 

Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859), a miscellaneous writer 
of remarkable power, was the son of a Manchester merchant, 
and was born at Greenhay, near Manchester. The first of 
many sorrows, the death of a favorite sister, came to him in 
his sixth year, and the death of his father in the following 
year destroyed for him the happiness of home-life. He was 
partly educated at Bath, and at the i^rara mar-school of Man- 
chester, where he made incredible progress in classical study. 
He could have harangued an Athenian audience in their own 



356 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

tongue. In his seventeenth year he broke away from the 
gramniar-school, and began a wandering life on a guinea a 
week in North Wales. Growing tired of the country in less 
than half a year, he came up to London, where for a whole 
year he lived, or rather tried to live, by his wits. It was the 
wretched life of a street waif, homeless, penniless, starving, 
and fugitive from all friendly inquiry. At last his friends 
found him, and he was sent in 1803 to Worcester College, 
Oxford, with a yearly allowance from his guardians of £100. 
At Oxford he led the shy, retiring life of a recluse, speaking 
to none, and scarcely knowing his own tutor. It was in the 
second year of his course at the university that he first be- 
gan to use opium, to counteract the pain of neuralgia, a dis- 
ease which he had incurred by exposure during the unhappy 
period of his vagrancy. It was " a pleasing vice," from 
which he was never afterwards able to sever himself. He 
left the university after four years' residence, during which 
he read a great deal in the classics, philosophy, and English 
literature. He could easily have taken a brilliant degree, but 
shrank from oral examination. 

In 1809, attracted to the Lake District by a fricndsliip 
for Coleridge and an admiration for Wordsworth, he settled 
in the cottage in which Wordsworth had lived at Townend, 
Grasmere ; and this remained his home, more or less contin- 
uously, for the next twenty years. He had an independency 
of £150 a year, most of which he laid out in books. Here 
he read, and dreamed, and drank laudanum, and drifted 
into pecuniary difficulties. His daily dose of the seductive 
liquid rose by the time he was thirty to as much as 8000 
drops — a quantity sufficient to poison forty people ! In his 
thirty-first year he married Margaret Simpson, the daugh- 
ter of a Westmoreland farmer, making at the time a vain 
effort to be free of his besetting vice. The years 1817-1818 
are memorable as the period of his complete subjection to 
opium. The mingled pleasures and miseries of those years 
are the subject of the famous Confessions of an Opium-Eater^ 
which appeared in The London Magazine in 1821, and at- 
tracted great attention, as much by the peculiar brilliancy 



THOMAS DE QUINCEY 357 

and music of the style as by the strange disclosures of fact 
which they contained. During his residence at Grasmere he 
tried various shifts to add to his slender income — editing 
even, for a short time, The Westmoreland Gazette ; but now 
his connection with The London Magazine opened a way 
for him in periodical literature. He pursued his way with 
unexpected vigor ; and numerous articles, critical, political, 
philosophical, followed the Confessions, all announced to be 
from the pen of " the English Opium-eater." During his 
connection with The London Magazine, which lasted till 
1824, he lived much in lodgings in London. Pecuniary 
troubles annoyed him from time to time, and his usual ref- 
uge was the laudanum-decanter. 

In 1826, being now in his forty -first year, he sent his first 
articles, on German Prose Classics, to Blackivood's Magazine. 
Next year he contributed the famous essay on Murder, which 
he humorously affected to consider as one of the Fine Arts. 
This connection he made through John Wilson (Christopher 
North), and in 1830 the attraction of his Scottish friends 
drew him permanently from the Lake District to Edinburgh. 
He established his wife and family in a cottage, at Dud- 
dingston or at Lasswade, he himself preferring for the most 
part to live in lodgings in Edinburgh. Besides contributing 
to Blackwood, he wrote also for Tait's Magazine and Hogg's 
Instructor. During the last ten years of his life he was free 
of debt, and comparatively free of opium. He died in ob- 
scure lodgings in Edinburgh. Shy and eccentric, but with 
the refined manners of a gentleman and the quiet dignity of 
a scholar, De Quincey led a strange twilight kind of exist- 
ence, frequently stealing from observation, and ingenious in 
his concealments. He was an entertaining and eloquent 
converser when he could be seduced into society and found 
his company congenial. 

De Quincey is even more admired in America than at 
home. It was in America that his works were first collect- 
ed. The home edition extends to as many as sixteen vol- 
umes, arranged by himself in three classes according as they 
contain (1) instruction and amusement, or (2) criticism and 



358 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

philosophy, or (3) the serious expression of exalted feeling 
and phantasy. A great deal of what he wrote is autobio- 
graphical or connected with his own history ; much of it is 
poetry in the form of prose. He is as subtle and complete 
in analysis as he is vivid and comprehensive in description. 
A peculiar gravity of manner accompanies both his humor 
and his pathos. He is one of the greatest masters of Eng- 
lish prose. For copious and expressive language ; for bal- 
ance and proportion of sentence, however long or involved ; 
and for the noble music and suggestiveness of his rhythms, 
De Quincey has scarcely his match. He lifts prose almost 
to the level of the noblest verse, and much above what 
passes for meritorious verse. His chief fault in the matter 
of style is a tendency to over-elaboration and diffuseness. 
Very characteristic specimens of his genius and style will be 
found in The Confessions of an Opium-Eater, A Vision of 
Sudden Death, Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts, and 
the Suspiria de Frofundis. 

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), one of the greatest forces 
in English literature, and probably the most stimulating lit- 
erary force of the nineteenth century, was born in humble 
life in the obscure village of Ecclefechan, in Dumfriesshire, 
twenty - four years after the birth of Scott, and thirty - six 
after that of Burns. Scotland has produced no literary 
men so eminent as these three. They enter in close suc- 
cession, each his own chosen field, and stand there head and 
shoulders above all others. The field of Burns is Song, and 
his sway is over the feelings ; that of Scott is Romance, 
and he rules the imagination; that of Carlyle is Thought, 
and he dominates the reason and the will. His sympathies 
are in " the living present " ; his watchwords are truth and 
duty ; all his interest is in effort and struggle. He is the 
Seer, the Thinker, the Critic. 

He was the son of James Carlyle — a stone-mason who 
had also tried farming — and was educated at Annan and 
Edinburgh University with a view to the Church. At Edin- 
burgh he gave himself up for five years to mathematical 



THOMAS CARLYLE 359 

study, and took a distaste to preaching. Teaching was only- 
less distasteful, but he remained, teacher or tutor, in the pro- 
fession into which he had drifted, from his twentieth to his 
thirtieth year. He began, the year after he left college, 
to teach mathematics at Annan, and continued to do so 
at Haddington and Kirkcaldy, till in 1818 he had some 
thoughts of reading for the bar. But as tutor to two broth- 
ers he went back to teaching, with which he now began to 
conjoin some literary work for Brewster^s Encyclopcedia. 
He had become an ardent student of German poetry and phi- 
losophy, and his first appearance before the public was (in 
1824) as translator of Goethe's great prose-work Wilhelm 
Meister. Next year he published a Life of Schiller. He 
was now entirely launched upon literature, and trying to 
make his way in London. 

In 1826, at the age of thirty -two, he married Jane Welsh, 
who had been his pupil at Haddington; and, settling in 
Edinburgh, where through his wife he made the acquaint- 
ance of Jeffrey, he began to write on German topics for The 
Edinburgh Review. He had previously made a connection 
with The London Magazine. He was already a martyr to 
dyspepsia, an ailment which afflicted him his whole life long, 
and which, if it was not the cause of his satirical views of 
common life, imbittered and deepened his satire. He now 
proposed to withdraw into a moorland solitude — the prop- 
erty of his wife — where he might think undisturbed and 
undistracted ; and Mrs. Carlyle, whose inclination was alto- 
gether for society and the city, dubiously consenting, he en- 
tered the wilderness of Craigenputtock, part of a bleak Gal- 
lowegian moor, though in Nithsdale, in the year 1828. He 
was a denizen of this drear desert — six miles from a civil- 
ized homestead, sixteen from a town — for the next six years. 
It was misery to his wife, but he himself seems to have been 
sufficiently happy — at least, for a time. He did excellent 
literary work here, notably his brilliant Essay on Burns for 
The Edinburgh, and the more characteristic Sartor Resartus 
— a strange production, both in subject-matter and in style, 
which scared every publisher it came to, till Frasefs Maga- 



360 'i^IIE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

zine ventured to take it in instalments. It is a book on the 
philosophy of Old Clothes — a metaphorical phrase for the 
conventions and shams under which the members of a com- 
munity hide from themselves and each other. *' All things 
which we see and work with, especially we ourselves (and 
all persons), are a kind of vesture, or sensuous appearance, 
concealing the Divine Idea of the World within us." 

Carlyle emerged from the desert at the same time that 
Sartor was astonishing and puzzling London — in 1834. He 
was now in his fortieth year, and was beginning to be talked 
of. He established his household in Cheyne Row, Chelsea; 
and here was his home for the rest of his life. It was chiefly 
that he might have ready access to books that he left Craig- 
enputtock for Chelsea. His life's history for the next forty- 
five years is a long record of work. Book after book and 
pamphlet after pamphlet added to his fame and increased 
his influence and authority in the land, till his utterances 
were regarded with something of the veneration paid to an 
oracle, and he seemed to be invested with the powers of a 
legislature. In 1837 appeared his powerful history of The 
French Revolution (see p. 377), which is, on the whole, his 
masterpiece. A singular proof of his genius (" Genius," he 
said, "is an immense capacity for taking pains ") is connect- 
ed with the writing of this work. He had lent for perusal 
the MS. of the first volume to his friend, the philosopher 
John Stuart Mill, and while it was in Mill's custody it was 
accidentally destroyed. Without a word of reproach, what- 
ever his feelings were, Carlyle, after a brief despondent in- 
terval, set to work, and within six months the loss was re- 
stored. 

In 1837 Carlyle came forward as a lecturer, and delivered 
various courses to thronged audiences in London. It was 
for the lecture-room he first wrote Heroes and Hero-Worship, 
published in 1841. He also published about the same time 
his Miscellaneous Essays and his Past and Present. But 
eight years elapsed from the time when he published The 
French Revolution before he was ready with another great 
work. This time Oliver Cromwell was the subject, and The 



THOMAS CARLYLE 361 

Elucidation of CromiuelVs Letters and Speeches — as the book 
might very well be called — appeared in 1845. Cromwell 
was a hero after Carlyle's own heart — rough, energetic, ear- 
nest, honest. After this laborious and elaborate work, Car- 
lyle took up several smaller subjects, such as current politics 
(dealt witli in Latter-Day Pamphlets)^ the biography of John 
Sterling (1851), and what he called " The Nigger Question." 
And then he braced himself up for the most difficult and ex- 
hausting — and not the most successful — of all his tasks. The 
History of Frederick the Great. The undertaking lasted for 
fourteen years, and the work was published between 1858 
and 1865. It is a text-book in military schools in Germany 
— so fully and so accurately is the history given. Carlyle 
visited the battle-fields he describes. Frederick was a less 
congenial hero than Cromwell. 

In 1866 Carlyle, now in his seventy -first year, delivered to 
the students of Edinburgh, who had elected him their Lord 
Kector, a remarkable extempore address on the Choice of 
Books. The same year his wife died, and Carlyle was in- 
consolable. On her gravestone in Haddington Church he 
caused to be carved the sorrowful testimony, in which re- 
gret probably mingles with a sense of bereavement, that 
"the light of his life was gone out." In 1875 he pub- 
lished his Early Kings of Norway ; but he chiefly busied him- 
self after his wife's death with editing her Memorials^ and 
writing his own Reminiscences. The latter appeared under 
Froude's editorship shortly after his death. 

The style of Carlyle is rugged but strong, and unrhyth- 
mical but marvellously picturesque. The sentences are un- 
balanced, the periods unmusical. It is a style of words and 
phrases which appeal for their effect on the mind rather to 
the eye than to the ear. Their revelations are like those 
of the lightning-flash. His words, singly or in collocation, 
are sometimes unpronounceable, and seem to be thrown to- 
gether at hap-hazard, not seldom in defiance of grammatical 
rule. Yet his style has the great merit of being original 
and significant ; not a phrase, not a word, is used before be- 
ing tested for its individual work. He employs German 



362 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

idiom, but it is wrong to say that his style is German. His 
favorite figures of speech are Exclamation and Apostrophe, 
nearly always employed with startlingly dramatic elfect. 
They are the natural result of his own creative imagination, 
and his quick, impulsive sympathy with the men and scenes 
he describes. For him the scene lives, and he is a part of 
it. He is a master of irony and vituperation. His scorn of 
pretence in small creatures withers ; his blazing detestation 
of huge quacks and hypocrites annihilates. Not seldom his 
anger overtakes both the innocent and the guilty. His way 
of influencing the reason and the will is less by argument 
than by iteration ; what he says is spoken with authority, 
and enforced by repetition. It is the higher reason of con- 
science to which he appeals ; he therefore does not seek to 
convince by communicating proof, but rather to arouse the 
mind to a sense of its own intuitions. 

OTHER CRITICS AND ESSAYISTS 

One of the most brilliant essayists of his time was Sydney Smith 
(1771-1845), born in Essex, of French extraction on the mother's 
side of the house, and well educated at Winchester and Oxford. 
He entered the Church, and became a curate near Amesbury, in 
Wiltshire. '' The squire look a fancy to me," he tells us, "and 
requested me to go with his son to reside .at Weimar, but be- 
fore we could get there Germany became the seat of war, and in 
stress of politics we put into Edinburgh, where I remained five 
years" (1798-1803). His sojourn at Edinburgh, wiiere he officiated 
in the Episcopalian chapel, was signalized by the foundation of 
The Edinburgh Review, of which, with Jeffrey and Brougham, lie 
was one of the origiuators. He afterwards lield livings in York- 
shire and Somersetshire, and latterly (in 1831) was appointed to a 
canonry in St. Paul's. He remained in the Yoikshire parish for 
twenty years, during which time he conjoined the various offices 
of parson, doctor, magistrate, and man of letters. In 1839, by 
the death of his younger brother, who had amassed a fortune in 
India, he found himself, in his grand climacteric, unexpectedly 
a rich man. As a talker, a lecturer, and a writer Sydney Smith 
was distinguished for his wit. But to wit he added the more solid 
qualities of sound reasoning and the rare gift of clear exposition. 
He threw himself readily into all the moral and political ques- 
tions of the day, and— though undeniably a humorist— is no less 



OTHER CRITICS AND ESSAYISTS 3^53 

entitled to the honor of a reformer than to the reputation of a 
wit. His chief works are The Letters of Peter Plymley, in favor 
of Catholic emancipation, published iu 1808 ; and his Essays, con- 
tributed to The Edinburgh BevieiD between 1802 and 1828. He 
was the creator of the well-known fictitious character Mrs. Par- 
tington. 

Coleridge, the poet, takes a distinguished place among the critics 
of his time, not only for his connection with the literary depart- 
ment of the periodical press (see p. 286), but also for his Literaria 
Biographia, published in 1817. But the best of his criticism and 
philosophy was uttered by the living voice; "pen in hand he 
found a thousand checks and diflSculties in the expression of his 
meaning, but never the smallest hitch in the fullest utterance of 
it by word of mouth." 

The most fearless and influential critic of his time was Francis 
Jeffrey (1773-1850), who was born in Edinburgh, educated first at 
the higli scliool there, and afterwards at Glasgow and Oxford, 
and admitted a member of the Scottish bar in 1794. His progress 
as an advocate was slow. Meanwhile he utilized his leisure by 
engaging in literary pursuits, and in 1802, in conjunction with 
Sydney Smith, Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, and other 
young men of like mind, he set agoing The Edinburgh Review. 
The institution of this periodical marks an epoch in the history of 
literary criticism scarcely inferior in importance to the establish- 
ment of the periodical essay by Steele and Addison. Jeffrey's 
connection as editor and copious contributor to The Edinburgh 
Review continued for over a quarter of a century, and was charac- 
terized by great taste and judgment, and a brilliancy of style that 
won general admiration. He was happiest in his criticism of 
poetry, though he was occasionally unfortunate in his estimates — 
never more so than wlien he declared that Wordsworth's Excur- 
sion would "never do." His opinion of Scott's Marmion was 
nearly as far wrong ; and he was unable to appreciate the peculiar 
genius of Charles Lamb. By-and-by Jeffrey began to rise in his 
profession ; he made a great reputation as a pleader in addressing 
juries; was appointed lord advocate in the Whig interest in 
1830, with the representation of Edinburgh in the House of Com- 
mons a few y(iars later; and in 1834 was raised to a judgeship on 
the Scottish bench with the title of Lord Jeffrey. He resided lat- 
terly at Craigcrook, on the west side of Edinburgh, and there dis- 
pensed an elegant hospitality to literary savans and distinguished 
visitors. In conversation and in criticism his influence was always 
on the side of a pure morality. He had a keen and vivacious 
rather than an original or profound mind. 

The most delightful essayist and quaintest humorist of the 



364 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

period was Charles Lamb (1775-1834). He was of humble origin, 
but was well educated at Christ's Hospital School, and but for an 
impediment of speech would have gone to the universit}^ witli 
Coleridge to study for the Church. In liis seventeenth year he 
obtained a clerkship in the East India House, and maintained him- 
self and his sister Mary, comfortably because economically, on 
the small income of the office for many years, till 1825. In that 
year, he being then fifty, he retired on a generous pension — 
"came home forever," as he said — and presently settled at En- 
field, where he died from the results of a trifling fall in 1834. A 
pathetic tragedy is connected with his domestic life ; the taint of 
madness was in the Lamb family — Charles himself had been for a 
short time, in his twenty-first year, but only for that one time, 
confined in an asylum ; but Mary was subject to recurrent fits of 
lunacy, and in one of these mysterious visitations, before any one 
in the room could interfere, she had stabbed her mother to death. 
Lamb's devotion to his sister, who in her lucid intervals much re- 
sembled himself in shrewd intelligence and gentle, genial humor, 
more than makes amends for the occasional excesses into wliicli 
he was drawn by his social instincts. With her he wrote a series 
of Tales from Shakespeare, which is still a popular book with the 
young. All his life Lamb was a great admirer and student of the 
Elizabethan drama, and poetry generally; he wrote a poetical 
play, JohnWoodvil, in the Elizabethan manner, and several charac- 
teristic short poems, such as The Old Famiiliar Faces, and the Lines 
to Hester; and he published, as the fruit of his ^iw&y , Specimens 
of the Drama of Shakespeare's Times, a work which did much to 
revive the influence of the elder drama. But he found his true 
sphere in periodical Essays contributed, under the signature of 
" Elia," to The London Magazine. Scarcely less interesting than 
these inimitable essays — charged as they are with a delicate play 
of wit, humor, and pathos, expressing itself with the airy graces 
and quaint devices of Ariel — is the correspondence of Lamb, 
lately put forth under the editorship of Dean Ainger. The letter 
in which he speculates on being made Baron — Duke— King — per- 
haps even Pope Lamb, and the essays on Roast-Pig, All Fools' 
Day,- and Dream-Children — are good examples of the peculiar 
qualities and flavor of Lamb's easy, playful, intimate style, and 
strangely changeful or even mingling moods. Lamb's sincerity 
and humanity of heart endeared him as much to his friends as his 
wit and penetration of mind. He was a true son of the city, lov- 
ing the " populous solitude" for its freedom and the "sweet se- 
curity of its streets"; yet he once climbed Skiddaw, and found at 
the top a novel but an uneasy delight. 

William Hazlitt (1778-1830), the son of a Unitarian clergyman. 



OTHER CRITICS AND ESSAYISTS 355 

was born in Shropsliirc, and trained to be an artist, but abandoned 
the pencil for the pen. He maintained liiniself by lecturing, but 
mainly by writing for the periodical press. His chosen tield was 
poetical criticism, especially that of the Elizabethan age. His in- 
timate knowledge and tine appreciation of old authors, and his 
eloquent and often impassioned expression of his critical views on 
all subjects connected with poetry, the drama, and the tine arts — 
above all, the emphatic force and directness of his judgment — 
made him a great power, especially among young people, in the 
earlier part of the century. Among his collected works may be 
enumerated The Round Table and Characters of Shakespeare's Plays 
(both published in 1817): his Lectures on the English Poets (1818), 
followed by Lectures on the English Comic Writers, and Lectures 
on the Dramatic Literature of the Reign of Elizabeth; his Ta^le 
Talk (in 1821-1822), and The Spirit of the Age (1825). 

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), born in London, was the 
son of an English clergyman who, before he took orders, had been 
driven by his loyalty to England from America at the time of the 
American War for Independence. He was educated at Christ's 
Hospital, where, in the preceding decade, Coleridge and Lamb had 
been scliool-fellows. "I had the honor," says Hunt, in his charm- 
ing Autobiography, " of going out of the school in the same rank, 
at the same age, and for the same reason [a hesitation of speech] 
as my friend Charles Lamb." He became a journalist, at first on 
The Examiner, a weekly periodical of which he was joint editor 
and proprietor with his brother. He was fined and imprisoned for 
tw^o years for a libellous description of the Prince Regent as " a fat 
Adonis of fifty." From a happy habit of making the most of his 
circumstances, characteristic of Hunt's whole life, he scarcely felt 
the irksomenessof his restraint. He papered the walls of his room 
"with a trellis of roses"; he had the ceiling "colored with 
clouds and sky"; the window bars were "concealed with Vene- 
tian blinds "; he set up his bookcases " with their busts and flow- 
ers "; and he introduced a piano. It was a pleasure to him to see 
the surprise of a visitor entering and finding so cheerful a room 
within the walls of a jail. There he received Byron, Moore, and 
many other friends and sympathizers ; and there he wrote his fine 
narrative poem, The Story of Rimini. On his liberation he re- 
turned to journalism, with which he combined literature in the 
various forms of stories, essays, novels, poetry, and lively and en- 
tertaining biographical chat about his great contemporaries, and 
especially himself. He lived a good deal in Italy. But he was 
always improvident in money matters, and generally imprudent 
in politics, and thereby put some of his friendships to a severe 
strain. In 1847 he became a pensioner of the crown to the extent 



366 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

of £200 a year. Hunt's style is light, lively, picturesque, and 
bright with delightful fancies often quaintly, sometimes exqui- 
sitely, expressed. His inspiration was from the gayer aspects of 
nature, and social or domestic life — birds and bowers, and flowers 
and bees, books and the hearth and the home-circle. He was an 
ardent student of Chaucer and Boccaccio, Ariosto and Spenser. 
In poetry he belonged, like Keats, to what his literary opponents 
called the Cockney School — better designated the Literary or 
Artistic School, Of his numerous productions, besides the Italian 
tale in verse and the Autobiography already mentioned, it is per- 
haps sufficient to notice Lord Byron and Some of Ms Contempora- 
ries, and A Jar of Honey from Mount Ilyhla, 

Jolin Wilson (1785-1854), better known as Christopher North, 
was born in Paisley, the son of a wealthy manufacturer ; edu- 
cated at Glasgow and Oxford, trained for the Scottish bar, and 
appointed to the Chair of Moral I'hilosophy in Edinburgh. At 
Oxford he won the Newdigate prize for poetical composition, 
and the reputation of an athlete. He bought Elleray, a small es- 
tate on the shore of Windermere, cultivated the acquaintance of 
Wordsworth, and became a Lake poet by the publication (in 1812) 
of The Isle of Palms and (in 1816) The City of the Plague. The 
loss of his fortune brought him from his Elysium among the 
English lakes to legal study, lectures, and literature in Edin- 
burgh. It was into Blackwood's Magazine he poured his literary 
wealth. The robustness of his genius now showed itself in his 
criticism of the literary and political persons and events of his 
time. Humor, pathos, critical insight, passion, eloquence, and up- 
roarious fun so followed each other, and were so permeated by 
a strong current of national feeling antagonistic to Cockneydom, 
in the Nodes Amhrosianre in Blackwood, that the heart of Scotland 
was fairly taken captive, and Christopher North became a house- 
hold word equally known and admired with the names of Burns 
and Scott. The greatest merit of Wilson, both as professor and 
writer, lay in the inspiring power and suggestiveness of his teach- 
ing. But, for future fame, he paid too little attention to form, 
and was waseteful of his splendid gifts "as hill-sides of their 
streams in thunder-rain." Besides his poetry, which reveals the 
gentle and delicate side of his genius, and the Nodes (1822-1833), 
which displays his whole nature, he wrote with a quiet and sym- 
pathetic tenderness The Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life {1S22) 
and The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay (1823) — stories descriptive 
of humble rural life — and the joyous and genial Recreations of 
Christopher North. 

Macaulay, Thackeray, and Matthew Arnold (all more fully noticed 
elsewhere) also deserve a place among the critics and essayists of 



CRITICS AND ESSAYISTS STILL LIVING 367 

the period-Macaulay for his brilliant articles contributed to The 
Ediiihurgh Review, beginning witli Milton in 1825, and continued 
with Clive, Warren Hastings, Banyan, Johnson, Byron, etc., as 
well as for biographies of Goldsmith, Pitt, etc., written for the 
EncydopcEdiaBntcuimca; Thackeray for his faniiliar and easy- 
ffoincr Eoiuidahout Papers, and especially his English Humourists 
fm-st^iven to the public as lectures in 1851); and Matthew Arnold 
for hi^ thoughtful Essays in GrUicism (1865 and 1888), Vie Study 
of Celtic Literature (1867), Literature and Dogma (1873), etc. 

John Brown (1810-1882), an Edinburgh physician, author of 
IIorcB Subsecivce-^ volume of essays and sketches, of which the 
best known is Bab and his Friends. Vf • ..f Thr 

William Minto (1846-1893), born at Aberdeen; editoi_ of I he 
Examiner afterwards. Professor of Logic and English Literature 
ut Aberdeen, author of A Manual of English Prose Literature, and 
The Literature of the Georgian Era (1894). 

A LIST OF CKITICS AND ESSAYISTS STILL LIVING 

John Ruskin (born 1819), the foremost in influence and elo- 
quence of art critics, and a prophet-not yet much recognized- 
of moral and social reform. He was born in London the only 
child of a wealthy wine-merchant, originally from Scotland, care- 
fully educated at home from his earliest years, and sent to Christ 
ClZch, Oxford, at the age of eighteen. All through his boyhood, 
from his fifth year, he travelled much with his P^^'^^^^^^^ ^V^^V^^^ 
and abroad; was allowed to read very much what he liked, and 
chose Scott, and Pope's Homer, for week-days, reservmg TA. Pi- 
X'^ Progress and Robinson Crusoe for Sundays; was obliged to 
?ead the Bible through once a year, and commit to memory large 
portions of it ; was provided with classical tutors who never could 
P-ive him a taste for the classical tongue, and tutors of art, for 
thom as a pupil he had little regard ; wrote tales and vei^es ; was 
^irrounded with costly works of art, pictures and illustrated 
editions of the poets; and, when he went to Oxford, -- -^om^ 
panied by his mother, who lived in the town to be neai him. He 
hs characterized his education as having been both 'too luxuri- 
o s and too formal." It is the story of his own past tha he began 
to tell in Pra^terita (1886). At Oxford, where he studied for three 
year he took the Newdigate prize for poetry in 1839, and grad- 
uated in 1842. In the next year he entered fairly on his career as 
an hor by publishing the first volume of Modern Painters. The 
wo k was completed in 1860, and is to-be regarded as his greatest, 
it o Ho-inated in a defence of Turner against an attack made upon 
that g"'reat rrtist in Blackwood's Magazine, and was meant to show 



368 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

the superiority of modern lancTscapists to the Old Masters. The 
brilliancy of the style, the iutimale kuowledge of natural phenom- 
ena, the devotion to art, and the originality and audacity of the 
statements which the work everywhere displays, drew public at- 
tention to the "graduate of Oxford" at once, and the second vol- 
ume, in 1846, established his reputation. Ruskin is a voluminous 
author, singularly poetical in the choice of his titles as well as in 
his elaborate descriptions of nature and art. Among his works 
may be mentioned The Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones 
of Venice; a treatise on Pre-Raphaelitism, or the direct personal 
study of nature, counselling artists to "paint things as they prob- 
ably did look and happen, not as, by rules of art developed under 
Raphael, they might be supposed ... to have happened"; Notes 
on the Gonstruction of Sheepfolds, dealing with Church discipline ; 
Sesame and Lilies, two lectures on "good" literature, and The 
Croion of Wild Olive (1865 and 1866); The Queen of the Air, deal- 
ing with Greek myths ; Aratra Pentelici, or the principles of 
S(;ulpture; Proserpina, on the subject of wild tlowers ; Deucalion, 
on geology; and Fors Glavigera, a serial put forth at irregular 
intervals over a number of years, and handling a great variety of 
topics in a rather loose, colloquial style. Ruskin, who was Slade 
Professor of Fine Arts at Oxford from 1869 till 1879, has in vari- 
ous ways, by donations of money and art treasures, as well as by 
his writings, exerted a great influence for true and earnest work, 
especially among the later generation of artists. In ethics and 
politics he claims to be the successor of Carlyle. Some years 
ago he took up his residence on the shore of Lake Coniston in 
the Lake District. 

David Masson (born 1822), a native of Aberdeen ; a follower of 
Carlyle in the thoroughness and earnestness of his work ; Professor 
of Rhetoric and English Literature in Edinburgh Univerity ; au- 
thor of Essays Bior/raphical and Critical, and British Novelists and 
their Styles (1859), besides numerous reviews and other articles con- 
tributed to literary magazines. (See p. 378.) 

Goldwin Smith (born 1823), a native of Reading; trained to the 
legal profession ; at one time Professor of History at Oxford ; now 
settled at Toronto University, Canada ; author of Lrish History 
and Lrish Character, Lectures and Essays, critical biographies of 
Cowper, Jane Austen, etc., 

Leslie Stephen (born 1832), a native of Kensington; one of the 
editors of the Dictionary of National Biography ; author of Honrg 
in a Library, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury, and critical biographies of Johnson, Pope, Swift, ete. 

Theodore Watts (born 1836), a native of St. Ives; intimate friena 
of Tennyson, Rossetti, Swinburne ; one of the best critics of the 



LIST OF AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 369 

day ; his essays on literature (contributed to tlie Examiner, AtJie-. 
noBum, Fortnightly, etc.) uncollected. 

John Morley (born 1838), a native of Blackburn ; at one time ed- 
itor of The Fort niglitly Review ; ixnihov oi Burke, a Historical Study, 
and Biographies of Voltaire, Rousseau, etc. ; abandoned literature 
for politics, and is at present (1894) Chief Secretary for Irelatid in 
the Gladstone-Rosebery administration. 

Edward Dowden (born 1843), a native of Cork ; Professor of Eng- 
lish Literature in Dublin University ; author of The Mind and Art 
of 8hakspere (1875), a Life of Shelley (1888), and English Litera- 
ture of the Nineteenth Century (not yet published). 

Andrew Lang (born 1844), a native of Selkirk ; a poet, and one 
of the most popular critics of the day ; author of Boohs and Book- 
men, Letters to Dead Authors (188C), Lost Leaders (1889), etc. ; 
translator of Homer (with Professor Butcher, of Edinburgh Uni- 
versity), Theocritus, etc. ; contributes largely to current journal- 
ism. 

Stopford A. Brooke, theologian and critic ; author of Theology in 
the English Poets and a Primer of English Literature (1876) ; at 
present incumbent of Bedford Chapel, Bloomsbury ; the biogra- 
pher of Robertson of Brighton, and editor of Shelley's Poems. 

George Edward Bateman Saintsbury (born 1845), a native of South- 
ampton, and educated at London and Oxford ; for some time a 
teacher at Manchester, Elgin, etc. ; an authoritative scholar of 
French literature ; author of A History of Elizabethan Literature 
(1887), Essays on French Novelists (1891), and critical Lives of 
Dry den, Marlborough, etc. 

William Ernest Henley, besides being a poet {A Book of Verses, 
etc.) and dramatist {Beau Austin, etc.), collaborating in the drama 
with R. L. Stevenson, is also one of the most brilliant critics of 
the time ; author of Vieics and Reviews; till recently editor of The 
Scots (afterwards The National) Observer. 

Edmund William Gosse (born 1849), a native of London ; Lecturer 
on English Literature at Cambridge till 1889, in succession to Les- 
lie Stephen ; author of Noi'thern Studies (of Danish and Dutch 
literature), English Literature of the Eighteenth Century (1889), a 
critical biography of Gray, Gossip in a Library, etc., besides The 
Secret of Narcissus, a novel (1892), and several volumes of verse. 



A LIST OF AMERICAN ESSAYISTS 

Washington Irving (1783-1859), a native of New York ; author of 
The Sketch-Book, Bracebridge Hall, Lives of Columbus, Goldsmith, 
etc. Irving was a resident in England from 1815 to 1832. He is 
sometimes called the American Addison, 

24 



370 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865), a Nova Scotian judge ; 
author of Sam, Slick the Clockmaker, Yankee Stories, Nature and 
Human Nature, etc. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson, born at Boston in 1803 ; wrote Society and 
Solitude, etc. He is sometimes called the American Carlyle. (See 
p. 335.) 

Oliver Wendell Holmes (born 1809), author of The Autocrat of the 
Breakfast Table, etc. (See p. 336). 

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), born at Concord, the friend of 
Hawthorn, Emerson, etc. ; author of Walden, or Life in the Woods, 
being an account of his experiences of two years' residence in a 
shanty of his own construction at Walden, on the estate of Emer- 
son. 

James Kussell Lowell (1819-1892), a native of Massachusetts, 
Longfellow's successor at Harvard, and for some time Ambassador 
at the British Court ; author of some delightful essays collected 
under such titles as Among my Books (1870), My Study -Windows 
(1871), etc. ; popularly known as the humorist poet who wrote The 
BigloiD Papers. He has also edited with fine taste and sound judg- 
ment several of the English poets, from Marvell to Shelley, for 
American readers. 

Bayard Taylor, born in Pennsylvania in 1825 ; a great traveller ; 
author of Vieios Afoot, At Home and Abroad, By-ways of Europe, 
etc. 

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in the State of Missouri in 1835 ; 
better known as Mark Twain ; author of The Jumping Frog, In- 
nocents Abroad, The New Pilgrim's Progress, Eye-Openers, and other 
humorous sketches. The humor is often rather forced. 

John Burroughs, born in New York State in 1837 ; author of 
Winter Sunshine, Locusts and Wild Honey, Birds and Poets, Fresh 
Fields, and other collections of essays on rural and literary sub- 
jects. 

HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lord Macaulay (1800-1 859), 
the greatest historian of the nineteenth century, and the 
most popular historian of modern times, achieved great dis- 
tinction, not only as a writer of history, which was his fa- 
vorite subject, but also as an essayist and poet, and as a 
statesman and orator. A great charm of all his productions 
is the style in which they are written, and to the beauty of 
style he added a fulness of knowledge that was phenomenal. 
His style was original ; Jeffrey was puzzled to know where 



LORD MACAULAY 37I 

he had picked it up ; his powers of memory — capacity, re- 
tention, and readiness — were astounding; he was always 
reading, and read everything, and what he once read he 
never forgot. 

He was the eldest of a large family of children born to 
Zachary Macaulay and his wife Selina Mills. The place of 
his birth was Rothley Temple, in Leicestershire, the seat of 
his uncle, after whom he was named, Thomas Babington. 
His father, the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister, lat- 
terly settled at Cardross, in Dumbartonshire, was, at the time 
of young Macaulay's birth, secretary to an English company 
engaged in the establishment of a colony at Sierra Leone for 
liberated slaves. His mother, the daughter of a Bristol book- 
seller, belonged to a family of kindly Quakers. Macaulay's 
education was conducted at home or at private schools till 
he was seventeen. Stories almost incredible are told of the 
avidity with which he read, the industry with which he wrote, 
and the singular precocity of his mind, even in childhood. 
He was a student at the age of three ; at four he was speak- 
ing like a book — when suffering from a scald he did not 
allow that the pain was getting less, but announced that 
" the agony was abating " ; at six he repeated from memory, 
after a single hurried perusal of the poem, long passages of 
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel ; before he was eight he 
had written a Comijendium of Universal History ; at ten he 
was composing an epic, having already written part of a 
metrical romance in the manner of Scott's Marmion, and 
made considerable way with a heroic poem on Olaus the 
Great, or the Conquest of Mona. 

His career at Trinity College, Cambridge, at which he was 
entered in 1818, was marked by unusually clever scholarship 
in every study except that of mathematics. He won medals 
and prizes for poems and essays ; was an eloquent debater at 
the Union ; wrote brilliantly for The Etonian and Knight's 
Quarterly — contributing to the latter magazine Ivry and the 
splendid fragment The Armada^ took his Bachelor's degree 
in 1822 ; was made a Fellow of his college in 1824 ; and in 
1825 graduated Master. 



372 '^HE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

When lie first went to Cambridge his father was possessor 
of a fortune made in the African trade ; it was lost before 
Macaulay left Cambridge, and at twenty-five he found him- 
self the hope and main-stay of his family. That year he 
made his debut in literature by the publication of his famous 
article on Milton in Jeffrey's Review. It was the first of a 
long and fascinating series of papers written for the great 
Whig Quarterly. From his fellowship and his pen he was 
at this time deriving an income of £e500 a year. Meanwhile 
he had been reading for the bar, and in 1826 joined the 
Northern Circuit. As a barrister he cannot be said to have 
had any practice. His attention was divided between poli- 
tics and literature. In 1830, then in his thirtieth year, he 
entered Parliament for the pocket borough of Calne, to 
which he had been presented by one of the Whig leaders, 
the Marquis of Lansdowne ; and at once took an active part 
in the great debates on Reform. In 1833 he sat in the House 
for Leeds. 

But his fellowship had nearly run out, and it was neces- 
sary that he should earn more money for the proper main- 
tenance of himself and his dependent father and sisters. 
One sister was dead. His mother had died in 1831. There 
is no more endearing trait in Macaulay's character than the 
strength and purity of his home -feeling. His letters, his 
whole conduct shows it. " Love to all," he wrote, " — to all 
who are left me to love. We must love each other better." 
For the sake of those loved ones he accepted the post of 
legal adviser to the Supreme Council of India, and sailed for 
Calcutta in 1834. The salary was £10,000 a year; and his 
chief duties proved to be connected with the framing of a 
penal code. His residence in India turned his attention to 
Indian subjects — for he still maintained his connection with 
The Edinburgh Review and literature. Literary fame was 
indeed his sole ambition. Gain, fashion, power, pleasure, he 
viewed them all with indifference. But the idea of literary 
fame enraptured him. To him she was " the glorious lady 
with eyes of light, and laurels clustering round her lofty 
brow," who had sat by his cradle in childhood " warbling a 



LORD MACAULAY 373 

sweet strange music." Through all successes and reverses 
of " the fleeting hour " she waited on him, consoling him 
with her presence and her assurances, not less in India than 
in England. 

"Thine, though around thy litter's track all day 
White sand-hills shall reflect the blinding glare ; 
Thine, though through forests breathing death thy way 
All night shall wind by many a tiger's lair." 

His most popular Indian studies were the Essays on Clive 
and Warren Hastings. They first turned public attention to 
British rule in India, and created a general interest at home 
in Indian affairs which has existed ever since. But in India 
he also wrote most of his Lays of Ancient Rome. 

Macaulay came home in 1838, and resumed his political 
career, following it concurrently with literary pursuits. He 
became M.P. for Edinburgh ; and filled successively the of- 
fices of secretary for war under Lord Melbourne, and pay- 
master-general of the forces, with cabinet rank, under Lord 
John Russell. In the interval between those appointments 
he published The Lays (1842), still as fresh and popular af- 
ter half a century as they were on their first appearance. 
They are supposed to be four of the lost ballads of ancient 
Rome from which, according to Niebuhr, such pictorial nar- 
ratives of the kings and early consuls as those of Livy were 
constructed. They are just such poems in subject and sen- 
timent as one would expect from Macaulay, and exhibit 
the same excellent characteristics of picturesque clearness, 
terse force, and manly freedom of style which are conspicu- 
ous in his prose. To Niebuhr for something of his matter, 
and to Scott for something of his manner, in these noble 
Lays, Macaulay made his acknowledgments. In 1843 he 
published a collected edition of his Essays. 

Macaulay's advocacy of religious freedom in the State, 
more especially his Support of the Maynooth grant, roused 
against him what he called "the sullen priesthood" of his 
constituency, and through their influence upon the electors 
he found himself the rejected of Edinburgh in August, 1847. 



374 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Before this he had been busy with his great historical work, 
and in 1848 the first two volumes of The History of England 
from the Accession of James the Second made their appear- 
ance, and were bought up at once. Many succeeding edi- 
tions were required to satisfy the demand, which was almost 
as great in America as here. The next two volumes were 
published in 1855, with even greater success, and there was 
one posthumous volume. It was Macaulay's original design 
to bring his History down to times within " the memory of 
men still living " — that is, to the era of the French Revolu- 
tion at least, or perhaps to the battle of Waterloo. But he 
does not quite get to the accession of Queen Anne. Taken 
as it stands, it is the noblest fragment of English history in 
our literature. Substantially correct, it is not without inac- 
curacies of detail and misrepresentations of character. Marl- 
borough, for example, and William Penn scarcely get jus- 
tice ; and the account of the Glencoe Massacre is a Scottish 
grievance. 

In 1852 Edinburgh made amends for her mistake of 1847 
by returning him spontaneously, without his solicitation of 
a single vote by public address or private canvass ; and he 
sat as member for the northern capital for the next four 
years. In 1857 he was raised to the peerage, but enjoyed 
the title only two years. He died of heart disease at the 
close of 1859, in the sixtieth year of his age, and in the sec- 
ond week of January, 1860, was buried in Westminster Ab- 
bey. 

Macaulay's first quality as a writer is lucidity. He is intel- 
ligible at once. Much of this is gained by a carefully ar- 
ranged selection of facts, and by brevity of sentence ; but a 
good deal also is due to a habit of repeating the same idea 
in different words till the mind of the reader is familiarized 
with it, and can accept it at last as an epigram. His use 
of comparison and antithesis conduces to the same end — 
perfect intelligibility. In illustrating his subject he is un- 
matched. In argument he is extremely persuasive — states 
his positions with clearness and moderation, and by logic as 
much as by rhetoric captivates and convinces. His manner 



OTHER HISTORIANS OR BIOGRAPHERS 375 

of teaclnng history, combined with such a style, could not 
fail to make him popular. He draws striking portraits of 
the leading actors in the great drama of life, paints scenes 
of attractive interest with telling touches of minute detail, 
and generally prefers to consider history in the light of the 
manners and pastimes, newspapers and popular ballads, of 
the times he is studying, to poring over dry statutes and de- 
ciphering dirty State documents. Writing with a brilliant and 
animated pen, he had the art of making fact appear as novel 
and attractive as fiction. This is something different from 
saying with Carlyle that his work is fiction and not history. 

Other writers of history or biography belonging to this period 
include : 

Sir James Mackintosli (1765-1832), a native of Inverness-shire, jour- 
nalist and barrister in London, and for seven years (1804-1811) re- 
corder of Bombay. On his return from India on a comfortable 
pension lie divided his time between politics and literature, choos- 
ing for his literary subjects philosophy and history. He wrote a 
popular History of England, and was busy with A History of the 
English Revolution at the time of his death. His VindidcB Qallicm, 
a defence of the French Revolution in opposition to the views of 
Burke, written when he was only twenty-five, "melancholy ex- 
perience " soon caused him to disavow. 

Sharon Turner (1768-1847), a London solicitor, author of a series 
of volumes dealing, somewhat grandiloquently, with English his- 
tory from the earliest times to the Union of the Crowns. The 
first portion, A History of the Anglo- Saxo)is (published 1799-1805), 
is much the most valuable. 

Sir waiter Scott, whose Tales of a Grandfather (already noticed) 
appeared during 1827-1830. 

John Lingard (1771-1851), a Roman Catholic clergyman of Lan- 
cashire, memorable for a singularly fresh, original, and impartial 
History of England, written dow^n to the Revolution of 1688. 

Thomas M'Crie (1772-1835), a Scottish clergyman, autlior of a 
warmly sympathetic Life of John Knox (1813), and, six years later, 
a Lfe of Andrew MelrilU; it was M'Crie who first challenged Sir 
Walter Scott's representation of the Covenanters in Old Mortality 
as a gross distortion of facts. 

Robert Southey, whose Life of Nelson (1813) is generally regarded 
as the best biography of the century. He also wrote A Life of 
Wesley (1820), and Lives of English Admirals (1833-1840), besides 
A History of Brazil and A History of the Peninsular War. 



376 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

Henry Hallam (1777-1859), born at W-indsor, educated at Eton 
and Oxfoid, and trained for the bar. A commissionership of au- 
dit, to whicii he was soon appointed, gave him the leisure for 
those liistorical studies upon which he has reared for himself a 
lasting fame. His most important works are View of the State 
of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818), Constitutional History of 
England, from 1485 to 1760 (1827), and Introduction to the Literature 
of Europe (1837). Hallam's style is dignified and succinct, yet 
generally clear and often engaging; his judicial candor and ample 
knowledge are universally allowed. Though a Whig, he was re- 
spected for his moderation by his political opponents. No more 
disinterested lover of truth than Henry Hallam can be found among 
historians. He also wrote a pathetic Memoir of his second son, 
young Arthur, the beloved of Tennyson. 

Thomas Moore, the Irish poet, author of A Life of Sheridan (1825), 
and Notices of the IJfe of Lord Byron (1830). Byron at his death 
left in the custody of Moore the materials for his biography; these 
Moore sold to Murray, the publisher, who was induced to part 
with them, and they were destroyed because of the scandalous 
disclosures they were said to contain. Thereafter Moore wrote 
the Notices, omitting the most objectionable passages of the poet's 
Memoirs, and presenting a narrative in pure and graceful English 
which errs in dealing somewhat indulgently with the failings of 
Byron. He received close upon £5000 for the work. 

Sir William Napier (1785-1860), a native of Ireland, author of a 
more interesting and valuable History of the Peninsular War (1828- 
1840) than Southey's. He took part in the actions he describes, 
and wrote with a soldier's knowledge of warfare and the vivid cir- 
cumstantiality of an eye-witness. 

Patrick Fraser Tytler (1791-1849), of Woodhouselee, the best 
known of a family of historians, author of A History of Scotland 
from the Reign of Alexander III. to the Union of the Crowns. He 
shows a decided bias against Knox. 

Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868), a native of London and Dean of 
St. Paul's, author of A History of the Jews, and A History of Early 
Christianity (1840). He also produced several dramas, not in- 
tended for the stage, of which The Fall of Jerusalem (1820) is the 
most poetical. 

Sir Archibald Alison (1792-1867), born in Shropshire of Scottish 
parents, educated at Edinburgh, and appointed sheriff of Lanark ; 
author of The History of Europe, a ponderous, diffuse, and often 
inaccurate work, dealing first with the period between the French 
Revolution and the Restoration of the Bourbons, afterwards ex- 
tended to the accession of Napoleon III. 

George Grote (1794-1871), member of a German banking family 



OTHER HISTORIANS OR BIOGRAPHERS 377 

established in England, and a Radical politician ; author of an au- 
thoritative History of Greece (1846-1856), at once philosophical and 
pictorial ; his Plato and the other Companions of Socrates appeared 
in 1865, and was followed seven years later by his Aristotle. 

Jolin Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), son-in-law of Scott, a member 
of the Scottish bar, a distinguished but too caustic critic, and a 
capable novelist (witness Valerius), the graceful translator also 
of Spanish Ballads ; best known for his Life of Sir Walter Scott 
(1837-1839), which is worthy of comparison with Boswell's Joh7i- 
son, and for a Life of Burns (1828). 

Thomas Carlyle, author of a Life of Schiller (1825), The French 
Revolution (1837), CromwelVs Letters and Speeches, with Elucidations 
(1845), and a History of Friedrich LL, called Frederick the Great 
(1858-1862-1865) ; wrote also the Life of John Sterling, remarkable 
more for the artistic finish of the style than the interest of the 
subject. The French Revolution is Carlyle's masterpiece, present- 
ing scenes, actions, and portraits with a rapidity, variety, fulness, 
and minuteness quite unmatched, in a style at once dramatic, im- 
passioned, and picturesque, such as had never before been at- 
tempted, and such as fixes the subject in whole and in part for- 
ever on the imagination. 

John Hill Burton (1809-1881), born in Aberdeen, a member of the 
Scottish bar, latterly historiographer royal for Scotland ; author 
of a History of Scotland (published 1867-1870), which commences 
with Agricola's invasion, and comes down to the Eevolution of 
1688 ; author also of an earlier History of Scotland, from the Revo- 
lution to the Extinction of the last Jacobite Lnsurrection (published 
1853). 

William Forbes Skene (1809-1892), born in Kincardineshire, a 
writer in Edinburgh, historiographer royal after Burton ; author 
of The Four Ancient Books of Wales (1868), and Celtic Scotland 
(1876-1880). 

Alexander WUliam Kinglake (1811-1891), a native of Taunton, and 
a barrister ; first noticed by the public for his Eothen, a pictur- 
esque book of Eastern travel ; famous for his brilliant History of 
the Lnvasion of the Crimea, in eight volumes, published 1863-1887. 
He undertook the work at the request of Lady Raglan. He was 
an eye-witness of the battle of the Alma. 

John Forster (1812-1876), born in Newcastle; a barrister, for some 
time editor of The Examiner and The Daily Neios ; famous for pleas- 
ing biographies of Goldsmith, Landor, and Dickens. 

Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862), a native of Kent, author of a 
History of Civilization in Europe (untinished) ; described by Macau- 
lay as "paradoxical and incoherent." 

-1892), a native of Staffordshire, 



378 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

for some time Examiner in Modern History and Law at Oxford ; 
author of many erudite histories, such as History and Conquest of 
tlie Saracens, History of the Norman Conquest, Groioth of the English 
Constitution, etc. ; also an Old English History for Children. 

John Richard Green (1837-1883), sometime Examiner in Modern 
History at Oxford, author of A Short History of the English People, 
a deservedly popular book, The Making of England (1882), and 
The Conquest of England (1883) — all written with ample knowl- 
edge in a picturesque style. 

Any list of eminent living historians and biographers must 
include : 

James Anthony Froude (born 1818), a native of Devonshire, and for 
some time Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford ; author of a dramati- 
cally written History of England, from the Eall of Wolsey to the He- 
feat of the Spanish Armada, and The English in Heland, etc. He 
was also Carlyle's literary executor and biographer (1882-1884). 

David Masson (already noticed as a critic, p. 368), author of an 
able and exhaustive Life of Milton, and History of his Time (pub- 
lished 1858-1880), British Novelists (1859), Life of Drummond of 
Hawthornden (1873), etc. ; a master of full, accurate, and lucid ex- 
position ; historiographer royal for Scotland. 

William Stubbs (born 1825), a native of Knaresborough, for some 
time Professor of Modern History at Oxford, now Bishop of Ox- 
ford (since 1889); author of the invaluable Constitutional His- 
tory of England in its Origin and Development (down to 1485), 
The Early Plantagenets, etc. 

Samuel Rawson Gardiner (born 1829), author of a History of Eng- 
land from the Accession of James L., begun to be published in 1863, 
and coming down in successive instalments— the last in 1889— to 
the history of the Civil War. 

Justin M'Carthy (born 1830), a native of Cork ; author of a 
popular History of Our Own Times (1880). 

John Skelton (born 1831), author of Maitland of Lethington and the 
Scotland of Mary Stuart. The Essays of Shirley are also from his pen. 

And William Edward Hartpole Lecky (born 1838), a native of Ire- 
land, who has written on Grattan and O'Connell and other leaders 
in Irish history, and is author of a History of Rationalism in Eu- 
rope, a History of European Morals (1869), and a History of Eng- 
land in the 18th Century ; he is a Unionist in politics. 

FAMOUS AMERICAN HISTOEIANS 

Daniel Webster (1782-1852), the Chatham of America, many of 
whose eloquent Speeches deal v/ith historical subjects. 



WKITEKS OF SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND THEOLOGY 379 

George Ticknor (1791-1871), born in Boston, wrote a History of 
Spa 1 1 ish Liter a tiire. 

William H. Prescott (1796-1859), born at Salem, Massachusetts; 
author of The Conquest of Mexico wnd. The Conquest of Peru. 

George Bancroft (1800-1891), born in Massachusetts, the historian 
of The United States. 

John Lothrop Motley (1814-1877), author of The Rise of the Dutch 
llepuUic, and History of the United Netherlands; the Macaulay of 
America. 

Also John Fiske, author of TJie Discovery of America, published 
1892. 

WRITERS OF SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND THEOLOGY 

Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), born at Penzance, one of the 
greatest chemists of the age, wrote The Elements of Agricultural 
Chemistry (1813), and Consolations in Travel, or The Last Days of 
a Philosopher, published posthumously. He was made a baronet 
in 1818 for his invention of the miner's safety -lamp. He died at 
Geneva. 

Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), son of the rector of Jedburgh 
Grammar-scliool, famous for his discoveries in optics, wrote in a 
clear, flowing, popular style A Treatise on the ^kaleidoscope (1818), 
Letters on Natural Magic (1831), and A Treatise on the Microscope, 
or More Worlds than One (1854). He was also the author of va- 
rious biographies of scientific men, such as Galileo, Kepler, etc. 
He invented the kaleidoscope. 

Michael Faraday (1791-1867), the son of a Surrey blacksmith, was 
a disciple of Davy, and distinguished himself in the study of elec- 
tricity. As a lecturer on natural science he had few equals, from 
a happy gift of lucid exposition and illustration. 

Sir John Herschel (1792-1871) wrote many treatises on astrono- 
my, and made numerous discoveries, which carried his name all 
over Europe. 

Sir Roderick Impey Murchison (1792-1871), a native of Ross-shire, 
and for nine years a cavalry officer, wrote on geology, his chief 
works being Tlie Silurian System (1839), and The Geology of Russia 
and the Ural Mountains (1845). 

Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875), another noted Scottish geologist, 
but of the Uniformitarian school, was a native of Forfarshire, and 
published his Principles of Geology in 1830-1832 ; in this work he 
sought to explain "the former changes of the earth's surface by a 
reference to causes now in operation." His Antiquity of Man ap- 
peared in 1863. 

Hugh Miller (1802-1856) was also a famous Scottish geologist. 



380 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

He was born in Cromarty, and followed for several years the craft 
of a stone-mason, but became latterly the editor of The Witness 
newspaper. He wrote The Old Bed Sandstone (1841), Footjjrints 
of the Creator (1850), and Testimony of the Rocks— not published till 
after his sudden and melancholy death. He was also author of 
Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland, My Schools and School- 
masters (a singularly interesting autobiography), as well as Impres- 
sions of England and its People, etc. A great object of Miller was 
to reconcile scientific fact with the Mosaic account of the Creation. 
Critics wondered where he acquired his pure classical English 
style. He excelled in description. 

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882), grandson of the poet Eras- 
mus Darwin (author of Tlie Botanic Garden), born at Shrews- 
bury, and educated at Edinburgh and Cambridge universities. 
He was naturalist on board of H. M. ship The Beagle in a five 
years' expedition round the globe. His great work On the Origin 
of Species hy Means of Natural Selection appeared in 1859, and 
aroused the attention of the civilized world. The Descent of Man 
followed twelve years later. He wrote many other interesting 
works, chiefly on botanical and geological subjects. A great 
merit of his writings lies in the amount of his facts, and in the 
moderation with which he states them. But his results, though 
gaining acceptance, are still matter of dispute. There is little 
charm in his style ; the charm lies in the originality and boldness 
of his theories, and the interest of his subject. He is probably the 
most eminent man of science of the century. His autobiography 
came out five years after his death. 

John Tyndall (1820-1893), Professor of Natural Philosophy at the 
Royal Institution, a native of Ireland. His first important work, 
undertaken in conjunction with Huxley, was on the structure and 
motion of glaciers, from observation in Switzerland. He has writ- 
ten, in a style informed with much literary grace, on heat, sound, 
and kindred subjects, and has done more, perhaps, than any other 
writer to popularize science throughout the English-speaking 
world. His more popular books are Mountaineering, Natural 
Philosophy in Easy Lessons, Essays on the Imagination in Science, 
Fragments of Science for Unscientific People, etc. Like his friend 
Huxley, he claimed and exercised unrestricted freedom in the in- 
vestigation of mental and physical science. 

Of scientific writers still living, the most prominent in literature 
are Alfred Russel Wallace (born 1822), author of Travels on the Am- 
azon, The GeograpJiical Distribution of Animals, and (in 1889) Dar- 
winism; Thomas Huxley (born 1825), the owner of a singularly 
clear and incisive style, author of Man's Place in Nature, Classifi- 



LIST OF AUTHORS FROM 1789 TO 1894 381 

cation of Animals, Lay Sermons (1870), America?! Addresses (1877), 
etc, ; and Sir Archibald Geikie (born 1835), a native of Edinburgh, 
and for some years Professor of Geology in Edinburgh University ; 
now director- general of the Geological Survey ; author of The 
Glacial Drift of Scotland, The Scenery of Scotland viewed in connec- 
tion loith its Physical Geography, etc. 

Books of Travel, which often collect the materials of Science, can 
only be referred to here. Among recent books of this kind are 
those of Layard, Speke, Grant, Burton, Livingstone, Stanley, and 
Isabella Bird (Mrs. Bishop). Of an earlier date are those of Frank- 
lin and other Arctic navigators ; Mungo Park and James Bruce. 

The philosophers of the period include: 

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), author of elaborate and independent 
works on Logic, Political Economy, Representative Government, 
Utilitarianism, Positivism, etc. His autobiography appeared in 
1873. 

And among many others still living: 

Herbert Spencer (born 1820), a native of Derby, and at first an en- 
gineer ; now probably the profoundest thinker of the age ; author 
of many works on Psychology, Biology, and Sociology. 

Frederick Max-Mtiller (born 1823), a native of Germany, Professor 
of Modern Languages at Oxford, a great Oriental scholar and phi- 
lologist ; author of Lectures on the Science of Language, Chips from 
a German Workshop, etc. 

The more prominent theologians include : 

Kojbert Hall (1764-1831) ; Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), author of 
Astronomical Discourses; Richard Whately (1787-1863), Archbishop 
of Dublin, author of works on Logic, Rhetoric, and Philology; 
Edward Bouverie Pusey (1800-1882), the Tractarian ; Cardinal New- 
man (1801-1890), author of Apologia pro Vita Sua; Thomas Guth- 
rie (1803-1873) ; Conybeare and Howson, joint authors of the Life 
and Epistles of St. Paul; Robertson of Brighton (1816-1853); Jowett 
(1817-1893), author of a Commentary on some of St. Paul's Epistles, 
and translator of Plato's Dialogues ; Alford, Caird, Farrar, Robertson, 
Smith, etc. 

I. A Chronological List of Authors from 1789 to the 
Present Time 

(A) Surviving from Last Period 

1722-1808. John Home, dramatist. 
1730-1797. Edmund Burke, essayist, etc. 
1731-1800. William Cowper, poet. 



382 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

1733-1804. Joseph Priestley, philosopher. 
1735-1803. James Beattie, poet. 
1737-1794. Edward Gibbon, historian. 
1743-1805. William Paley, philosopher. 
1744-1825. William Mitford, historian. 
1745-1814. Charles Dibdin, writer of sea-songs. 
1745-1831. Henry Mackenzie, essayist, etc. 
1748-1832. Jeremy Bentham, philosopher. 
1751-1816. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, dramatist. 
1752-1840. Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay), novelist. 
1753-1831. William Roscoe, historian. 
1754-1832. George Crabbe, poet. 
1757-1827. William Blake, poet. 

(B) Belonging to this Period 

1756-1826. William Gifford, critic and satirist. 

1756-1836. William Godwin, novelist. 

1762-1836. George Colman ("the Younger"), dramatist, 

1762-1850. William Lisle Bowles, poet. 

1763-1855. Samuel Rogers, poet. 

1764-1851. Joanna Baillie, dramatic poet. 

1764-1823. Anne Radcliffe, novelist. 

1764-1831. Robert Hall, theologian. 

1765-1832. Sir Robert Mackintosh, historian, etc. 

1765-1823. Robert Bloomfield, poet. 

1766-1845. Caroline Oliphant (Lady Nairne), Scottish poet. 

1767-1849. Maria Edgeworth, novelist. 

1770-1850. William Wordsworth, poet. 

1770-1835. James Hogg, Scottish poet. 

1771-1845. Sydney Smith, essayist. 

1771-1832. Sir Walter Scott, novelist and poet. 

1771-1854. James Montgomery, poet. 

1772-1834. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet. 

1772-1835. Thomas M'Crie, historian. 

1772-1844. Henry Francis Cary, translator of Dante. 

1773-1850. Francis Jeffrey, critic. 

1774-1810. Robert Tannaliill, Scottish song-writer. 

1774-1843. Robert Southey, poet, etc. 

1775-1818. Matthew Gregory Lewis, novelist. 

1775-1834. Charles Lamb, essayist. 

1775-1817. Jane Austen, novelist. 

1775-1864. Walter Savage Landor, poet, etc. 

1777-1844. Thomas Campbell, poet. 

1778-1830. William Hazlitt, critic. 



LIST OF AUTHORS FROM 1789 TO 1894 383 

1778-1859. Henry Hallam, historian. 
1779-1839. John Gait, novelist. 
1779-1852. Thomas JMoore, poet. 
1780-1847. Thomas Chalmers, theologian. 
1781-1849. Ebenezer Elliot, poet. 
1781-1807. Sir David Brewster, natural philosopher. 
1783-1826. Reginald Heber (Bishop), poet, etc. 
1784-1806. Henry Kirke White, poet. 
1784-1842. Alhxn Cunningham, Scottish song-writer. 
1784-1859. Leigh Hunt, essayist, etc. 
1784-1862. James Sheridan Knowles, dramatist. 
1785-1854. John Wilson (" Christopher North"), essayist, etc, 
1785-1859. Thomas de Quincey, essayist. 
1787-1863. Richard Whately (Archbishop), theologian, etc. 
1788-1824. Lord Byron, poet. 
1788-1856. Sir William Hamilton, philosopher. 
1788-1845. Richard Harris Barham, versifier (" Ingoldsby Le- 
gends"). 
1789-1851. James Fenimore Cooper, American novelist. 
1789-1855. Jane Mitford, novelist. 
1791-1868. Henry Milman, poet and historian. 
1792-1871. Sir John Herschel, natural philosopher. 
1792-1866. John Keble, poet. 
1792-1822. Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet. 
1792-1872. Sir John Bowring, translator of verse. 
1792-1848. Frederick Marryat, novelist. 
1792-1867. Sir Archibald Alison, historian. 
1793-1835. Felicia Browne (Mrs. Hemans), poet. 
1793-1864. John Clare, poet. 

1794-1878. William Cullen Bryant, American poet. 
1794-1854. John Gibson Lockhart, biographer, etc. 
1794-1871. George Grote, historian. 
1795-1854. Thomas Noon Talfourd, dramatist. 
1795-1881. Thomas Carlyle, historian, critic, philosopher. 
1796-1821. John Keats, poet. 

1796-1859. William Hickliiig Prescott, American historian. 
1796-1849. Hartley Coleridge, poet. 
1796-1880. James Robinson Blanche, pantomimist. 
1797-1875. Sir Charles Lyell, geologist. 
1799-1845. Thomas Hood, poet. 
1799-1827. Robert PoUok, poet. 
1800-1859. Lord Macaulay, historian and poet. 
1800-1886. Sir Henry Taylor, dramatist. 
1800-1882. Edward Bouverie Pusey, theologian. 
1800-1886. William Barnes, poet (Dorset dialect). 



384 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

1801-1890. John Henry, Cardinal Newman, ecclesiastic, etc. 

1801-1860. G. P. K. James, novelist. 

1802-1839. William Mackwortli Praed, poet. 

1803-1876. Thomas Aird, poet. 

1802-1856. Hugh Miller, geologist. 

1803-1857. Douglas William Jerrold, dramatist. 

1804-1881. Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beacon sfield), novelist. 

1804-1864. Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist. 

1805-1873. Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, novelist. 

1806-1867. Nathaniel Parker Willis, American poet. 

1806-1873. John Stuart Mill, philosopher. 

1806-1872. Charles Lever, novelist. 

1806-1861. Elizabeth Barrett (Mrs. Browning), poet. 

1809-1881. John Hill Burton, historian. 

1809-1882. Charles Darwin, naturalist. 

1809-1885. Richard Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), poet. 

1809-1892. Alfred Lord Tennyson, poet. 

1809- W. E. Gladstone, statesman, scholar, and critic. 

1809-1849. Edgar Allan Poe, American poet. 

1809-1891. Alexander William Kinglake, historian. 

1809- John Stuart Blackie (Professor of Greek), poet and 

translator. 
1809- Oliver Wendell Holmes, American essayist and poet. 

1810-1882. John Brown, essayist ("Rab and his Friends"). 
1810-1865. Elizabeth Stevenson (Mrs. Gaskell), novelist. 
1810-1889. Martin Farquhar Tupper (" Proverbial Philosophy"). 
1811-1863. William Makepeace Thackeray, novelist. 
1811-1890. William Bell Scott, poet. 
1812-1876. John Forster, biographer. 
1812-1870. Charles Dickens, novelist. 

1812- Harriet Beecher (Mrs. Stowe), American novelist. 

1812-1889. Robert Browning, poet. 
1813-1865. William Edmondstoune Aytoun, poet. 
1814-1884. Charles Reade, novelist. 
1815-1882. Anthony Trollope, novelist. 
1816-1853. Frederick William Robertson, theologian. 
1816-1855. Charlotte Bront(5, novelist. 
1816- Philip James Bailey, poet. 

1816- Sir Theodore Martin, translator of verse. • 

1817-1875. Sir Arthur Helps, historian and essayist. 
1817-1878. George Henry Lewes, biographer and essayist. 
1817-1880. Tom Taylor, playwright. 
1818- James Anthony Froude, historian ; Alexander Bain, 

philosopher. 
1819-1861. Arthur Hugh Clough, poet. 



LIST OF AUTHORS FROM 1789 TO 1894 385 

1819-1875. Charles Kingsley, novelist. 

1819- Joliu Ruskin, art critic, etc. 

1819-1880. Mary Ann Evans ("George Eliot"), novelist. 

1820- Margaret Wilson (Mrs. Olipliant), novelist. 

1820- Herbert Spencer, philosopher. 
1820-1893. John Tyndall, natural philosopher. 

1821- Frederick Locker, writer of Vers de Societe. 
1822-1888. Matthew Arnold, poet, critic, etc. 
1822-1862. Henry Thomas Buckle, historian. 

1822- David Massou, biographer and critic. 

1822- Alfred Kussel Wallace, naturalist. 
1823-1892. Edward Augustus Freeman, historian. 

1823- Goldwin Smith, critic. 

1823- Coventry Patmore, poet. 

1824- Walter Chalmers Smith, poet. • 
1824-1889. William Wilkie Collins, novelist. 

1824- George MacDonald, novelist and poet. 

1825- Richard Doddridge Blackmore, novelist. 
1825- Thomas Huxley, writer of science. 
1826-1887. Dinah Maria Mulock (Mrs. Craik), novelist. 
1828- George Meredith, novelist and poet. 

1828- Gerald Massey, poet. 
1828-1882. Dante Gabriel Rossetti, poet. 

1829- Samuel Rawson Gardiner, historian. 
1830-1867. Alexander Smith, poet. 

1830- Jean Ingelow, poet; Henry Calderwood, philosopher; 

James Payn, novelist. 
1831-1884. Charles Stuart Calverley, parodist. 
1831-1892. Edward Robert Bulwer Lytton (Lord Lytton), "Owen 

Meredith," poet. 
1832- Lewis Morris, poet ; Edwin Arnold, poet. 

1 832- Leslie Stephen, essayist and critic. 

1834-1882. James Thomson, "B. V.," poet. 

1834- William Morris, poet. 

1835- Lewis Morris, poet. 

1835- Alfred Austin, poet. 

1836- Theodore Watts, critic and poet. 
1837-1883. John Richard Green, historian. 

1837- ' Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet. 

1837- Mary Elizabeth Braddon, novelist. 
1838-1861. David Gray, poet. 

1838- William Edward Hartpole Lecky, historian. 
1838- John Morley, biographer and critic. 

1838- Walter Besant, novelist. 

1840- Henry Austin Dobson, poet; Thomas Hardj--, novelist. 

25 



386 THE SIXTH PERIOD, 1789-1894 

1841- "William Black, novelist. 

1841- Robert Buchanan, poet, dramatist, novelist. 

1843- Edward Dowden, critic. 

1844- Andrew Lang, critic and poet, 

1845- George Edward Bateman Saintsbury, critic ; William 

Ernest Henley, poet and critic. 
1846-1893. William Minto, critic. 

1849- Edmund William Gosse, critic. 

1850- Robert Louis Stevenson, novelist and poet. 

1851- Mary Augusta Arnold (Mrs. Humphry Ward), didactic 

novelist. 
1853- Hall Caine, novelist. 

1859- A. Couan Doyle, story-teller ; S. R. Crockett, novel- 

ist. 

1860- J. M. Barrie, essayist and novelist. 

1864- Rudyard Kipling, poet and writer of fiction. 

II. A Chronological List op some of the Principal Books 

PUBLISHED SINCE 1789 

1791. Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. 

1792. Rogers's Pleasures of Memory. 

1793. Wordsworth's Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. 

1794. Paley's Evidences of Christianity. 
1796. Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de Medici. 

1798. Wordsworth's and Coleridge's Lyrical Ballads (containing 

The Ancient Mariner). 

1799. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope. 

1800. Coleridge's Translation of Schiller's Wallenstein. 

1801. Scott's Eve of St. John, etc., and Southey's Lord William, 

in Lewis's Tales of Wonders. 

1802. Scott's Border Minstrelsy ; Edinburgh Review founded. 

1805. Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel ; Southey's Madoc ; Roscoe's 

Life of Pope Leo X.; Cary's Dante's Inferno. 

1806. Coleridge's Christabel. 

1807. Byron's Hours of Idleness ; Moore's Irish Melodies (Part I.). 

1808. Scott's Marmion ; Quarterly Review founded. 

1809. Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; Campbell's 

Gertrude of Wyoming. 

1810. Scott's Lady of the Lake; Southey's Curse of Kehama. 

1812. Byron's Childe Harold (First Part). 

1813. Byron's Giaour and Bride of Abydos ; Hogg's Queen's Wake; 

Shelley's Queen Mab. 

1814. Byron's Lara and The Corsair; Scott's Waverley ; Words- 

worth's Excursion. 



SOME BOOKS PUBLISHED SINCE 1789 337 

1816. Scott's Old Mortality ; Shelley's Alastor. 

1817. Moore's Lalla Rookli ; Scott's Rob Roy ; Blackwood's Maga- 

zine founded. 

1818. Hallam's Middle Ages ; Keats's Endymion ; Scott's Heart of 

Mid-Lothian ; Shelley's Revolt of Islam. 

1819. Scott's Bride of Lamraermoor and Ivanhoe ; B^^ron's Don 

Juan (I. and II.). 

1820. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, and Hyperion; Scott's 

Monastery and The Abbot ; Shelley's Witch of Atlas and 
Prometheus Unbound. 

1821. Byron's Cain; De Quincey's Confessions of an Opium-Eater; 

Gait's Annals of the Parish ; Shelley's Adonais. 

1822. Lamb's Essays of Elia ; Wilson's Noctes Ambrosiante (in 

Blackwood's Magazine, continued to 1835). 

1825. Macaulay's Essay on Milton. 

1826. Disraeli's Vivian Grey ; Scott's Woodstock. 

1827. Lord Lytton's Pelham; Scott's Tales of a Grandfather. 
1831. Ebenezer Elliot's Corn-Law Rhymes (continued to 1846). 

1833. Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (in Eraser's Magazine). 

1834. Lytton's Last Days of Pompeii ; Blackie's Faust. 

1835. Browning's Paracelsus. 

1836. Dickens's Pickwick Papers ; Disraeli's Henrietta Temple. 

1837. Carlyle's French Revolution ; Lockhart's Life of Scott. 

1838. Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby. 

1839. Bailey's Festus. 

1841. Browning's Pippa Passes; Carlyle's Hero Worship. 

1842. Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. 

1843. Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit; Ruskin's Modern Painters 

(vol. i., last vol. in 1860). 

1847. Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre; Tennyson's Princess; Thack- 

eray's Vanity Fair. 

1848. Clough's Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich; Lytton's The Cax- 

tons; Macaulay's History of England (vols, i., ii.). 

1849. Aytoun's Laws of the Scottish Cavaliers ; Dickens's David 

Copperfield ; Ruskin's Seven Lamps. 

1850. Mrs. E, B.Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese ; Tenny- 

son's In Memoriam. 

1851. Ruskin's Stones of Venice ; Thackeray's English Humor- 

ists (lectures). 

1852. Dickens's Bleak House. 

1853. Kingsley's Hypatia ; Landor's Imaginary Conversations 

Lytton's My Novel. 

1854. Thackeray's The Newcomes. 

1855. Matthew Arnold's Poems ; Browning's Men and AVomen ; 

Tennyson's Maud ; Kingsley's Westward Ho ! 



388 THE SIXTH PEUIOD, 1789-1894 

1856. E. B. Browning's Aurora Leigh ; Froude's History of Eng- 

land (vols, i., ii.). 

1857. Reade's Never too Late to Mend ; Tliackeray's The Virgin- 

ians; Trollope's Barchester Towers. 

1858. Carlyle's History of Frederick the Great (vols, i., ii,, fin- 

ished 1865) ; George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life ; 
Tennyson's Idyls of the King (Enid, Elaine, etc.); 
Buckle's History of Civilization (vol. i.) ; Gladstone's 
Studies on Homer; Masson's Life of Milton (finished 
1880). 

1859. George Eliot's Adam Bede ; Darwin's Origin of Species. 

1860. George EHot's Mill on the Floss ; Reade's The Cloister and 

the Hearth ; Collins"s Woman in White. 

1863. Robert Buchanan's Undertones. 

1864. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon. 

1835. George Meredith's Rhoda Fleming ; George Eliot's Romola; 
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies; Buchanan's Idyls of Inver- 
burn. 

1866. Blackie's Homer and The Iliad. 

1867. William Morris's Life and Death of Jason. 

1868. Browning's The Ring and the Book ; Morris's Earthly Para- 

dise ; Collins's Moonstone. 

1869. Blackmore's Lorna Doone ; Ruskin's Queen of the Air. 

1870. Dickens's Edwin Drood (unfinished) ; Disraeli's Lothair. 

1871. George Eliot's Middleraarch; Swinburne's Songs before Sun- 

rise ; Darwin's Descent of Man ; Black's Daughter of 
Pleth. 

1872. Lewis Morris's Songs of Two Worlds. 

1873. Black's Princess of Thule. 

1874. Green's Short History of the English People ; Hardy's Far 

from the Madding Crowed. 

1875. Tennyson's Queen Mary. 

1876. Lewis Morris's Epic of Hades ; Spencer's Principles of So- 

ciolog}^ 

1878. Lecky's History of England in the Eighteenth Century. 

1879. Calclerwood's Mind and Brain ; Edwin xlrnold's Light of 

Asia. 

1880. Lang's Ballades in Blue China ; Hardy's Trumpet-Major. 

1881. Rossetti's Ballads and Sonnets ; Swinburne's Mary Stuart. 

1882. Blackniore's Christowell ; Besant's All Sorts, etc. 

1883. Stevenson's Treasure Island. 

1884. Lang's Custom and Myth ; Black's Judith Shakespeare. 

1886. Stevenson's Kidnapped ; Buchanan's Sophia. 

1887. Haggard's She. 

1888. Lang's Grass of Parnassus ; Wordsworth's Tlie Recluse. 



SOxME BOOKS PUBLISHED SINCE 1789 



389 



1889. Tennyson's Demcter ; Bavrie's A Window in Thrums ; Wal- 

lace's Darwinism. 

1890. Stevenson's Ballads ; Sir Walter Scott's Journal. 
1893. Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. 

1893. Stevenson's Catriona; Sir flerbert :\raxweirs Life of W. H. 

Smith ; Kipling-'s Many Inventions. 

1894. Hall Caine's The Manxman ; Crockett's The Raiders. 



INDEX OF PRINCIPAL AUTHORS 



Addison, Joseph, 210, 214, 235. 

Aird, Thomas, 332. 

Akeuside, Mark, 202. 

Alfred, Kiug, 7, 8, 15. 

Alfric, Archbishop, S. 

Alison, Sir Archibald, 376. 

AUardyce, Alexander, 354. 

Aphra Behn, or Mrs. Ayfara, 209. 

Arbuthuot, Ur. John, 224. 

Armstrong, John, 202. 

Arnold, Sir Edwin, 333. 

Arnold, Mary Augusta, Mrs. Humphry 

Ward, 3.54. 
Arnold, Matthew, 329, 306. 
Ascham, Roger, 70. 
Aubrey, John, 243. 
Austen, Jane, 352. 
Austin, Alfred, 334. 
Ayfara, Mrs., or Aphra Behn, 209. 
Aytoun, William Edmondstouue, 328. 

Bacon, Francis, 125. 

Bailey, Philip James, 333. 

Baillie, Joanna, 330. 

Bale, John, 76. 

Bancroft, George, 379. 

Barbour, John, 28. 

Barrett, Elizabeth, Mrs. Browning, 327. 

Barrie, James M., 354. 

Barrow, Isaac, 251. 

Baxter, Richard, 250. 

Beaconstield, Benjamin Disraeli, Lord, 

347. 
Beattie, James, 202. 
Bede, 8, 17. 

Beecher, Harriet, Mrs. Stowe, 355. 
Bentley, Richard, 224. 
Berkeley, George, 247. 
Besaut, Walter, 353. 
Black, William, 354. 
Blackmore, Richard Doddridge, 353. 
Blair, Robert, 202. 
Blake, William, 199. 
Bioomfield, Robert, 330. 
Boswell, James, 242. 
Bowles, William Lisle, 330. 
Bowring, Sir John, 331. 
Boyle, the Hon. Robert, 251. 
Braddon, Mary Elizabeth, 353, 
Brewster, Sir David, 379. 
BroutO, Charlotte, 350. 



Bronte, Emily, 350. 

Brooke, Stopford A., 3G9. 

Brown, John, 367. 

Browne, Charles Farrar, 355. 

Browne, Felicia, Mrs. Hemaus, 331 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 131. 

Browne, William, 104. 

Browning, Robert, 315. 

Bruce, Michael, 202. 

Bryant, William Cullen, 335. 

Buchanan, Robert, 334, 354. 

Buckle, Henry Thomas, 377. 

Bulwer, Edward Lyttou, Lord Lytton, 

349. 
Bun y an, John, 244. 
Burke, Edmund, 221. 
Burnet, Gilbert, 235. 
Burnett, Frances Hodgson, 355. 
Burney, Fanny, 235. 
Burns, Robert, 178. 
Burroughs, John, 370. 
Burton, John Hill, 377. 
Burton, Robert, 131. 
Butler, Joseph, 252. 
Butler, Samuel, 187. 
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 290. 

C^DMON, 7, 13. 

Calverley, Charles Stuart, 332. 

Campbell, Dr. John, 243. 

Campbell, Thomas, 323. 

Carew, Thomas, 106. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 358, 377. 

Cary, Henry Francis, 331. 

Caxton, William, 72. 

Chapman, George, 122. 

Chatterton, Thomas, 202. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 30. 

Churchill, Charles, 202. 

Cibber, Colley, 210. 

Clare, John, 33L 

Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Lord, 133. 

Clarke, Samuel, 252. 

Clemens, Samuel L., "Mark Twain," 

355, 370. 
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 332. 
Coleridge, Hartley, 332. 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 285, 363. 
Collins, Wilkie, 353. 
Collins, William, 196. 
Colman, George, 210. 



392 



INDEX 



Coiigveve, William, 204. 

Cooper, Amhony Ashley, Earl of 

Shaftesbury, '2r)l. 
Cooper, James Feiiimore, C54. 
Coverdale, Miles, 73. 
Cowley, Abraham, ISS, '223. 
Cowper, William, 172. 
Crabbe, George, l!t8. 
Craik, Mrs. Dinah Miilock, 353. 
Crashaw, Richard, 111. 
Crawford, F. Marion, 355. 
Cudwortli, Ralph, 250. 
Cunningham, Allan, 3C1. 
Carrie, James, 244. 
Cynewulf, 8. 

Danikt,, Samuel, 100. 

Darwin, Charles llobert, 3S0. 

Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, 202. 

Davenaut, Sir William, 201. 

Davy, Sir Humphry, 87i). 

Defoe, Daniel, 225. 

Denham, Sir John, ISS. 

De Quincey, Thomas, 355. 

Dickens, Charles, 343. 

Dillon, Weutworth, Earl of Roscom- 
mon, 201. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, Lord Beaconsfield, 
347. 

Dobson, Henry Austin, 334. 

Doddridge. Philip, 252. 

Donne, John, 103. 

Dorset, Charles Sackville, Earl of, 201. 

Douglas, Gavin, C5. 

Dowden, Edward, 3G9. 

Drayton, Michael, 101. 

Drummond, William, 104. 

Dryden, John, 150, 20S, 223. 

Dunbar, William, 56. 

Dyer, John, 202. 

Edgewoutii, Maria, .^52. 

Eliot, George, Marian Evans (Mrs. 

Cross), 351. 
Elliott, Ebenezer, 331. 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 335, 370. 
Etheredge, Sir George, 201). 
Evans, Marian, George Eliot (Mrs. 

Cross), 3.51. 
Evelyn, John, 243. 

Falconer, William, 202. 

Faraday, Michael, 379. 

Farquhar, George, 207. 

Fergusson, Robert, 202. 

Fielding, Henry, 231. 

Fiske, John, 379. 

Fletcher, Giles and Phiueas, 103. 

Fletcher, John, 123. 

Forster, John, 377. . 

Fox, George, 243. 

Foxe, John, 74. 

Freeman, Edward Augustus, 377. 

Fronde, James Anthony, 37S. 

Fuller, Thomas, 131. 

Galt, John, 352. 

Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, 37S. 

Garth, Sir Samuel, 201. 



Gascoigne, George, C7. 

Gay, John, 195. 

Geikie, Sir Archibald, 3S1. 

Gibbon, Edward, 239. 

Glover, Richard, 202. 

Godwin, William, 352. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 197, 210, 218, 235, 

243. 
Gordon, George, Lord Byron, 290. 
Gosse, Edmund William, 309. 
Gower, John, 30. 
Grahame, James, 110. 
Gray, David, 333. 
Gray, Thomas, 107. 
Green, John lilchard, 378. 
Green, Matthew, 201. 
Greene, Robert, 122. 
Grote, George, 376. 

Haggaub, H. Rider, 354. 

Hailes, Lord, 243. 

Haliburton, Thomas Chandler, 370. 

Halifax,Cliarles Montague, Earl of, 201. 

Hall, Joseph, 103. 

Hallam, Henrv, 376. 

llalleck, Fitz-Greene, 335. 

Hardy, Thomas, 354. 

Harris, Joel Chandler, 355. 

Harte, Francis Bret, 3.86, 355. 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 355. 

Hazlitt, William, 364. 

Heber, Re>.nnald, 331. 

Hemans, Felicia Browne, Mrs., 331. 

Henley, William Ernest, 369. 

Henryson, 64. 

Herbert, (lieorge, 107. 

Herrick, Robert, 107. 

Herschel, Sir John, 379. 

Hervey, John, Lord, 243. 

Hey wood, John, 75. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 132. 

Hoijfg, James, 320. 

Hoiinshed, Ralph, 74. 

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 336, 370. 

Home, John, 210. 

Hood, Thomas, 326. 

Hooker, Richard, 129. 

Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes, 

Lord, 332. 
Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 61. 
Howells, William Dean, 355. 
Hume, David, 230, 253. 
Hunt, James Henry Leigh, 365. 
Hiitcheson, Francis, 252. 
Huxlev, Thomas, 380. 
Hyde, Edward, Lord Clarendon, 133. 

Ingici.ow, Jean, 333. 

Irving, Washington, 354, 369. 

Jamics L of Scotland, 51. 
James, G. P. R., 353. 
James, Henry, 355. 
Jeffrey, Francis, 363. 
Johnson, Samuel, 210, 216, 235. 
Jonson, Ben, 117. 

Keats, John, 302. , 
I Kemble, John, 331. 



INDEX 



393 



Kinglake, Alexaucler William, 377. 
Kingsley, Chaiicfs, 351. 
Kipliiijr, Ruclyard, 354. 
Knox, John, 74. 

Lamb, Charles, 364. 

Landor, Waller Savage, 322. 

Lang, Andrew, 334, 309. 

Laniiland, William, 25. 

Latimer, Hugh, 73. 

Layannm, 3(5. 

Leckv, V/illiam Edward Hartpole, 378. 

Lee, Nat, '209. 

Lever, Charles James, 353. 

Lewis, Matthew Gregory, "Monk 

Lewii>. 35'2. 
Lindsay, David, G6. 
Liiigard. John, 375. 
Locke, John, 246. 

Locker (-Lampson), Frederick, 333. 
Lockhart, John Gibson, 377. 
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 335. 
Lovelace, liichard, 109. 
Lowell, James llii^sell, 330, 370. 
Lvell, Sir Charlet^, 379. 
Lyly, John, 130. 
Lytton, Edward Lytton Bulwcr, Lord, 

349. 
Lytton, Edward llobert. Lord, 332. 

Macattlay, Thomas Babiugton, Lord, 

366, 370. 
MacDonald, George, 353. 
Mackintosh, Sir James, 375. 
Macpherson, James, 202. 
Mahony, Francis, " Father Front," 332. 
Malloch, or Mallet, David, 202. 
Mallory, Sir Thomas, 72. 
Maudeville, Sir Jolin, 3S. 
Marlowe, Christopher, 123. 
Marryat, Frederick, 353. 
Marston, John, 103. 
Marston, Philip Bourke, 333. 
Martin, Sir Theodore, 333. 
Marvell, Andrew, 190. 
Massey, Gerald, 333. 
Mas.^^iuger, Philip, 124. 
Miisson, David, 308, 378. 
Max-MUller. Frederick, 381. 
M'Carthy, Justin, 378. 
M'Crie, Thomas, 375. 
Mereditli, George, 353. 
Middleton, Conyers, 243. 
Mill, John Stuart, 381. 
Miller, Hugh, 379. 
Milman, Henry Hart, 376. 
Milnes, Richard Mouckton, Lord 

Houghton, 332. 
Milt.m, John, 91. 
IVIinot, Laurence, 38. 
Minto, William, 367. 
Mitford, William, 244. 
Montague, Charles, Earl of Halifax, 

201. ■ 
Montgomerv, James, 330. 
IVloore, Thoinas, 325, 376. 
More, Sir Thomas, 69. 
Moriey, John, 369. 
Morris, Lewis, 333. 



Morris, William, 333. 
]\Iotley, John Lothrop, 379. 
Mulock, Dinah, Mrs. Craik, 353. 
Murchison, Sir Roderick Impey, 379. 

Naiknk, Carolina Oliphaut, Baroness, 

330. 
Napier, Sir William, 370. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 251. 
Noel, Roden, 333. 
"North, Christopher," John Wilson, 

366. 

Or.TPUANT, Carolina, Baroness Nairue, 

330. 
Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret Wilson, 353. 
Orm, 37. 
Otway, Thomas, 203. 

Pai.ev, William, 253. 

Parnell, Thomas, 192. 

Patmore, Coventry, 333. 

Pavn, James, 353. 

Philips, Ambrose, 201. 

Poe, Edsar Allan, 330. 

Pollok, Robert, 332. 

Pope, Alexander, 156. 

Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 332. 

Prescott, William IL, 379. 

Priestlev, Joseph, 253. 

Prior, Matthew, 191. 

" Prout, Father," Francis Mahony, 332. 

QuAULKS, Francis, 107. 

Radomffk, Mrs. Ann Ward, 352. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 129. 

Ramsay, Allan, 193. 

Reid, Thomas, 252. 

Richardson, Samuel, 229. 

Robertson, William, 238. 

Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, 201. 

Rogers, Samuel, 319. 

RoUe, Richard, 38. 

Roscoe, William, 244. 

Roscommon, Weiitworth Dillon, Earl 

of, 201. 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 332. 
Rowe, Nicholas, 210. 
Raskin, John, 307. 
Rymour, Thomas, 38. 

Sackvitj.e, Charles, Earl of Dorset, 201. 

Sackville Thomas, 08, 70. 

Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman, 

309. 
Sava"-e, Richard, 202. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 277, 337, 375. 
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 

Earl of, 251. 
Shakespeare, William, 111. 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 296. 
Shenstone, William, 202. 
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 210. 
Sherlock, William, 251. 
Shirley, James, 125. 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 99. 
Skelton, John (poet). 54. 
Skeltou, John (essayist), 378. 



394 



INDEX 



Skene, William i'orbes, 6t(. 

Smith, Adam, 249. 

Smith, Alexander, 332. 

Smith, Goldwin, 368. 

Smith, Sydney, 362, 

Smollett, Tobias George, 233, 243. 

Somerville, William, 201. 

South, Robert, 251. 

Southerue, Thomas, 209. 

Southey, Eobert, 321, 375. 

Spencer, Herbert, 381. 

Spenser, Edmund, 85. 

Steele, Richard, 210, 211. 

Stephen, Leslie, 368. 

Sterne, Laurence, 232. 

Stevenson, Robert Louis, 334, 354. 

Still, John. 76. 

Stockton, Frank, 355. 

Stow, John, 75. 

Stowe, Mrs. Harriet Beecher, 355. 

Strype, John, 243. 

Stubbs, William, 37S. 

Suckling, Sir John, 100. 

Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 61. 

Swift, Jonathan, 224, 227. 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 334. 

Tannahitx, Robert, 331. 
Taylor, Bayard, 370. 
Taylor, Jeremy, 128. 
Temple, Sir William, 223. 
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 307. 
Thackeray, William Makepeace, 340, 

366. 
Thomson, James, 161, 210. 
Thomson, James (" B. V."), 333. 
Thoreau, Henry David, 370. 
Tickell, Thomas, 201. 



Ticknor, George, 379. 

Tillotson, John, 251. 

Trollope, Anthony, 353. 

Turner, Sharon, 875. 

"Twain, Mark," Samuel L. Clemens, 

355, 370. 
Tyudale, William, 72. 
Tyndali, John, 380. 
Tytler, Patrick Fraser, 376. 
Tytler, William, of Woodhouselee, 243. 

Udall, Nicholas, 75. 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 380. 

Waller, Edmund, 186. 

Walpole, Horace, 235. 

Walton, Izaak, 131. 

Ward, Ann, Mrs. Raddiffe, 352. 

Watts, Isaac, 252. 

Watts, Theodore, 334, 368. 

Webster, Daniel, 378. 

Wesley, John, 252. 

White, Henry Kirke, 331. 

Whitman, Walt, 336, 

Whittier, John Greenleaf, 335. 

Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 335. 

Wilmot, John, Earl of Rochester, 201. 

Wilson, John, "Christopher North," 

366. 
Wilson, Margaret, Mrs. Oliphant, 353. 
Wither, George, 105. 
Wordsworth, William, 269. 
Wulfstan, Archbishop, 8. 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 67. 
Wycherley, William, 208. 
Wyclif, John, 39. 

Young, Edward, 192, 210. 



THE END 



